University of North Carolina Press: Social Forces, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Oct., 1938), pp. 107-118.On a small and temporary scale the use of makeshift language is a universal phenomenon, to be witnessed wherever immigrants, invaders, tourists, or sailors go. Countless little mangled dialects are spoken for a while by chance-assembled groups, only to go out of existence when the individuals who compose them are scattered. One of the most favorable situations for the formation of such dialects is found aboard merchant vessels
which ply the seven seas and ship large numbers of foreign sailors-and indeed the seaman is a figure of the greatest importance in the creation of the more permanent makeshift tongues.
