Pidgin Madam

International audience Pidgin Madam is an almost 40-year old form of Arabic that developed outof the contact between Sinhala speaking Sri Lankan housemaids, and theirArab employers (mainly Madams) in Lebanon. The present paper exploresthe sociolinguistic context in which Pidgin Madam developed, focusing on the maids' mimetic acquisition of a highly reduced spectrum of Arabicreceived as input, as well as on the converging accommodative strategiesenacted by their Arab interlocutors. The main linguistic characteristics ofPidgin Madam are thhen traced, with a transcribed and annotated audiosample.