The following is the entry for this language as it appeared in the 14th edition (2000).
It was superseded by the corresponding entry in the 15th edition (2005). See also the corresponding entry in the current edition of Ethnologue.
SIL code: PML
ISO 639-2: crp
| Region | Tunisia; Dodecanese Islands west bank, Greece; Cyprus; other major Mediterranean ports. |
| Alternate names | PETIT MAURESQUE, FERENGHI, SABIR, 'AJNABI, ALJAMIA |
| Classification | Pidgin, Romance-based. |
| Comments | Lexicon from Italian and Provençal. An earlier version may have been a pidginized Latin. On the Barbary Coast of North Africa in 1578, its lexicon came from Spanish and Portuguese. In Algeria in the 1830s, it drew increasingly from French, and later became the nonstandard French of that area. It may also have influenced other pidgins. There is a report of a present-day variety on the Aegean Islands, used as a pidgin in the southeastern Mediterranean region, to have mainly Arabic syntax, and vocabulary which is 65% to 70% Italian, 10% Spanish, and other Catalan, French, Ladino, and Turkish words. Documented in Djerba, Tunisia in 1353. Dictionary. Coastal. Craftsmen, urban workers. sea level. Christian, Sunni Muslim. Extinct. |
