Kriol is an Australian creole language that developed from a pidgin used initially in the region of Sydney and Newcastle in New South Wales in the early days of European colonisation. Later, it moved west and north. The pidgin died out in most parts of the country except in the Northern Territory, where the contact between European settlers, Chinese and other Asians and the indigenous people in the northern regions of Australia has maintained a vibrant use of the language, spoken by about 30,000 people. Despite its similarities to English in vocabulary, it has a distinct syntactic structure and grammar and so is a language in its own right.