When is Language, Language?

I think it is more than a social bias which prevents a creole (patois) being classed as a separate language. The distinctions between "dialect" and "creole" are quite blurred. Generally speaking, the distinction which is made between a "language" and a "patois" (which, after all, is a derivation from another, already existing, tongue) is whether the two are mutually intelligible. For example, I have yet to meet a Haitian who could not understand standard French, although his preferred language, the one he was brought up with, is Haitian Creole. A "pidgin", however, is a different thing altogether. Most speakers of a particular pidgin will have great trouble understanding the standard language from which the pidgin derives, and vice versa. Thus --again, just as an example -- you won't understand much Papua-New Guinean pidgin, which is, after all, based on English.

"Dispella him savvy house blong Paul Andrew." Was that sentence meaningful to you? I just wrote, in Papua pidgin, "He knows where Paul Andrew's house is."

The distinction between a creole and a pidgin may seem subtle, but it is real, nonetheless.