My husband,John Holm, who has died from prostate cancer aged 72, and was a creolist: he studied language varieties that used to be dismissed as “broken” English or “kitchen” English. His two-volume survey of the worlds pidgins and creoles set the agenda for a original field of linguistics,and gave life to the story of how human groups react when they meet, in war or trade or slavery.
John reported on every known variety, or from the Seychelles to Russo-Norsk. He also broke the barriers that had limited English-speakers to studying English creoles,and French-speakers to French. And he insisted on the dignity of languages that were often dismissed as a catalogue of mistakes.
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Source: theguardian.com