Creole interpreters and translators for legal, medical, corporate and private matters.

A Creole language, or simply Creole, is a stable natural language that evolves over a short period of time from the simplification and mixing of various languages into a new one: sometimes, a pidgin has developed into a full-fledged language. Although the principle is close to that of a mixed or composite language, a propensity to systematise their ancestral grammar is also defined by Creoles. As any language, Creoles are distinguished by a coherent grammar structure, have broad stable vocabularies, and are learned as their native language by infants. These three attributes differentiate a Creole language from a pidgin. Creolistics, or Creology, is a subfield of linguistics, the study of Creole languages. Someone who believes in this research is considered a Creolist.

Much of the recognised European-based Creole languages originated in coastal regions of the equatorial belt around the world as a result of colonial European trade trends, including the Americas, Goa along the west of India, Western Africa, and along Southeast Asia up to Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Macau, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Reunion, Mauritius, Seychelles, Oceania. In the Caribbean, the north and east coasts of South America (the Guyanas), Western Africa, Australia (the Australian Kriol language), the Philippines (Chavacano) and the Indian Ocean, many of these Creoles are now extinct but some do exist.

It is not known the precise number of Creole languages, particularly when many are poorly attested or recorded. Since 1500, nearly one hundred Creole languages have emerged. Because of the European Era of Exploration and the Atlantic slave trade that occurred at the time, these are primarily based on European languages such as English and French. Traders wanted to learn to communicate with people around the world with the developments in ship-building and navigation, and the easiest way to achieve this was to create a pidgin, or condensed language appropriate for the purpose; from these pidgins, in turn, complete Creole languages were developed. There are, for example, Creoles based on Arabic, Chinese, and Malay, in addition to Creoles that have European languages as their basis. Haitian Creole, with over ten million native speakers, is the Creole with the highest number of speakers, followed by Tok Pisin with over 4 million, most of whom are second-language speakers.

In the social sense of the Creole construction, the lexicon of a Creole language is largely supplied by the parent languages, especially that of the most dominant group. There are sometimes noticeable phonetic and semantic changes, however. The grammar that has developed, on the other hand, also has new or special characteristics that are significantly different from those of the parent languages.

The Creole languages of the Atlantic was based on European languages with elements of African and probably Native American languages. The Creole languages of the Indian Ocean are based on European languages with Malagasy components, and probably on other Asian languages. However, there are Creole people, such as Nubi and Sango, who are drawn entirely from non-European languages.

Creole languages have historically been viewed as "degenerate" languages, or at least as rudimentary "dialects" of the politically dominant parent languages, owing to the generally low status of the Creole people in the eyes of previous European colonial powers. For this reason, linguists have usually used the term "Creole" as opposed to "language" rather than as a qualifier for it.

In the past few decades, Creole languages have undergone revivals because of socioeconomic, political, and scholarly shifts brought about by decolonisation in the second half of the 20th century. They are constantly being used in print and film, and their community reputation has significantly increased in many instances. In fact, some have been standardised and are used around the world in local schools and universities. At the same time, linguists have started to understand that Creole languages are not in any way inferior to other languages. For any language accused of having undergone creolisation, they now use the word "Creole" or "Creole language" words.