How do languages mix? Does it begin in chaos, new migrants and old inhabitants needing a pidgin to communicate? Or does it happen more smoothly, in stages? And what is a prakrit? Why do we hear only of prakrits, and never of pidgins, in South Asia?
In Father Tongue, Motherland, Peggy Mohan looks at exactly how the mixed languages in South Asia came to life. Like a flame moving from wick to wick in early encounters between male settlers and locals skilled at learning languages, the language would start to ‘go native’ as it spread. This produced ‘father tongues’, with
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