Tok Pisin language

Tok Pisin ( ,Laurie Bauer, 2007, ''The Linguistics Student's Handbook'', Edinburgh ; ), often referred to by English speakers as New Guinea Pidgin or simply Pidgin, is an English creole language spoken throughout Papua New Guinea. It is an official language of Papua New Guinea and the most widely used language in the country. In parts of the southern provinces of Western, Gulf, Central, Oro, and Milne Bay, the use of Tok Pisin has a shorter history and is less universal, especially among older people.

Between five and six million people use Tok Pisin to some degree, though not all speak it fluently. Many now learn it as a first language, in particular the children of parents or grandparents who originally spoke different languages (for example, a mother from Madang and a father from Rabaul). Urban families in particular, and those of police and defence force members, often communicate among themselves in Tok Pisin, either never gaining fluency in a local language () or learning a local language as a second (or third) language after Tok Pisin (and possibly English). Over the decades, Tok Pisin has increasingly overtaken Hiri Motu as the dominant lingua franca among town-dwellers. Perhaps one million people now use Tok Pisin as a primary language. Tok Pisin is slowly "crowding out" other languages of Papua New Guinea.

Name

originates from English ''talk'', but has a wider application, also meaning 'word, speech, language'. derives from the English word ''pidgin''; the latter, in turn, may originate in the word ''business'', due to the typical development and use of pidgins as inter-ethnic trade languages.

While Tok Pisin's name in the language is , it is also called "New Guinea Pidgin" in English. Papua New Guinean anglophones often call Tok Pisin "Pidgin" when speaking English. This usage of "Pidgin" (with capital P) differs from the term ''pidgin (language)'' as used in linguistics. In spite of its name, ''Tok Pisin'' is not a pidgin in the latter sense, because it has become a first language for many people (rather than simply a ''lingua franca'' to facilitate communication with speakers of other languages). As such, it is considered a creole in linguistic terminology.

Classification

The Tok Pisin language is a result of Pacific Islanders intermixing, when people speaking numerous different languages were sent to work on plantations in Queensland and various islands (see South Sea Islander and blackbirding). The labourers began to develop a pidgin, drawing vocabulary primarily from English, but also from German, Malay, Portuguese, and their own Austronesian languages (perhaps especially Kuanua, that of the Tolai people of East New Britain).

This English-based pidgin evolved into Tok Pisin in German New Guinea (where the German-based creole Unserdeutsch was also spoken). It became a widely used lingua franca and language of interaction between rulers and ruled, and among the ruled themselves who did not share a common vernacular. Tok Pisin and the closely related Bislama in Vanuatu and Pijin in the Solomon Islands, which developed in parallel, have traditionally been treated as varieties of a single Melanesian Pidgin English or "Neo-Melanesian" language. The flourishing of the mainly English-based Tok Pisin in German New Guinea (despite the language of the metropolitan power being German) contrasts with Hiri Motu, the lingua franca of Papua, which was derived not from English but from Motu, the vernacular of the indigenous people of the Port Moresby area.

Official status

Along with English and Hiri Motu, Tok Pisin is one of Papua New Guinea's three official languages. It is frequently the language of debate in the national parliament. Most government documents are produced in English, but public information campaigns are often partially or entirely in Tok Pisin. While English is the main language in the education system, some schools use Tok Pisin in the first three years of elementary education to promote early literacy.

Regional variations

There are considerable variations in vocabulary and grammar in various parts of Papua New Guinea, with distinct dialects in the New Guinea Highlands, the north coast of Papua New Guinea, and islands outside of New Guinea. For example, Pidgin speakers from Finschhafen speak rather quickly and often have difficulty making themselves understood elsewhere. The variant spoken on Bougainville and Buka is moderately distinct from that of New Ireland and East New Britain but is much closer to that than it is to the Pijin spoken in the rest of the Solomon Islands.

There are 4 sociolects of Tok Pisin:
# (meaning "talk of the remote areas") or (meaning "talk of the people of the remote areas")
# (meaning "language of the villages"), the traditional rural Tok Pisin
# (meaning "talk of the schools") or (meaning "talk of the Towns"), the urban Tok Pisin
# (meaning "language of the colonizers", unsystematically simplified English with some Tok Pisin words

Alphabet

Tok Pisin's alphabet has 21 letters, five of which are vowels, and four digraphs. The letters are (vowels in bold):
:a, b, d, e, f, g, h, i, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, v, w, y

Three of the digraphs (, , and ) denote diphthongs, while the fourth, , is used for both and .

Phonology

Tok Pisin has a smaller number of phonemes than its lexifier language, English. It has around 24 core phonemes: 5 vowels and around 19 consonants. This varies with the local substrate languages and the speaker's level of education. More educated speakers, and/or those where the substrate language(s) have larger phoneme inventories, may have as many as 10 distinct vowels.

Nasal plus plosive offsets lose the plosive element in Tok Pisin; e.g., English ''hand'' becomes Tok Pisin . Furthermore, voiced plosives become voiceless at the ends of words, so that English ''pig'' is rendered as in Tok Pisin.

Consonants

*Voiced plosives are pronounced by many speakers (especially of Melanesian backgrounds) as prenasalized plosives.
*, , and can be either dental or alveolar consonants, while is only alveolar.
*In most Tok Pisin dialects, the phoneme is pronounced as the alveolar tap or flap, . There can be variation between and .
*The labiodental fricatives may be marginal, with contrastive use present only in heavily Anglicized varieties. The use of vs. is variable. There is also variation between and in some words, such as / 'five'.
*Likewise, there may be marginal use of .

Vowels

Tok Pisin has five pure vowels:

Grammar

The verb has a suffix, (< Eng. ''him'') to indicate transitivity (, "look"; , "see"). But some verbs, such as "eat", can be transitive without it. Tense is indicated by the separate words (future) (< Eng. ''by and by'') and (past) (< Eng. ''been''). The present progressive tense is indicated by the word ; e.g., "He is eating".

The noun does not indicate number, though pronouns do.

Adjectives usually take the suffix (now often pronounced , though more so for pronouns, and for adjectives; from "fellow") when modifying nouns; an exception is "little". It is also found on numerals and determiners:
:Tok Pisin: → Eng. "one"
:Tok Pisin: → Eng. "two"
:Tok Pisin: → Eng. "this bloke"

Pronouns show person, number, and clusivity. The paradigm varies depending on the local languages; dual number is common, while the trial is less so. The largest Tok Pisin pronoun inventory is:

Reduplication is very common in Tok Pisin. Sometimes it is used as a method of derivation; sometimes words just have it. Some words are distinguished only by reduplication: "ship", "sheep".

There are only two proper prepositions:
* the genitive preposition (etym. < Eng. ''belong''), which is equivalent to "of", "from" and some uses of "for": e.g. "your key"; "They are from Gordon's".
* the oblique preposition (etym. < Eng. ''along''), which is used for various other relations (such as locative or dative): e.g. . "We went to the black market".

Some phrases are used as prepositions, such as ', "in the middle of".

Several of these features derive from the common grammatical norms of Austronesian languages, usually in a simplified form. Other features, such as word order, are closer to English.

Sentences with a 3rd-person subject often put the word immediately before the verb. This may or may not be written separate from the verb, occasionally written as a prefix. Although the word is thought to be derived from "he" or "is", it is not itself a pronoun or a verb but a grammatical marker used in particular constructions, e.g., is "car forbidden here", i.e., "no parking".

Tense and aspect

Past tense: marked by (< Eng. ''been''):
: Tok Pisin:
: English: "And the prime minister spoke thus."

Continuative same tense is expressed through: verb + .
: Tok Pisin: .
: English: "He/She is sleeping."

Completive or perfective aspect expressed through the word (< Eng. ''finish''):
: Tok Pisin:
: English: "He had got out of the boat."

Transitive words are expressed through (< Eng. ''him''):
: Tok Pisin:
: English: "Finish your story now!"

Future is expressed through the word "" (< Eng. ''by and by''):
: Tok Pisin:
: English: "If you take just any nails that happen to be around, those will rust."

Development of Tok Pisin

Tok Pisin developed out of regional dialects of the local inhabitants' languages and English, brought into the country when English speakers arrived. Four phases in Tok Pisin's development were laid out by Loreto Todd.
# Casual contact between English speakers and local people developed a marginal pidgin.
# Pidgin English was used between the local people. The language expanded from the users' mother tongue.
# As the interracial contact increased, the vocabulary expanded according to the dominant language.
# In areas where English was the official language, a depidginization occurred (Todd, 1990).

Tok Pisin is also known as a "mixed" language. This means that it consists of characteristics of different languages. Tok Pisin obtained most of its vocabulary from English (i.e., English is its lexifier). The origin of the syntax is a matter of debate. Edward Wolfers claimed that the syntax is from the substratum languages—the languages of the local peoples. Derek Bickerton's analysis of creoles, on the other hand, claims that the syntax of creoles is imposed on the grammarless pidgin by its first native speakers: the children who grow up exposed to only a pidgin rather than a more developed language such as one of the local languages or English. In this analysis, the original syntax of creoles is in some sense the default grammar humans are born with.

Pidgins are less elaborated than non-Pidgin languages. Their typical characteristics found in Tok Pisin are:

#A smaller vocabulary which leads to metaphors to supply lexical units:
#*Smaller vocabulary:
#*: = "election" (n) and "vote" (v)
#*: = "heavy" (adj) and "weight" (n)
#*Metaphors:
#*: (screw of the arm) = "elbow"
#*: (screw of the leg) = "knee" (Just almost always indicates the knee. In liturgical contexts, is "kneel.")
#*: (grass of the head) = "hair" (Hall, 1966: 90f) (Most commonly just —see note on above.)
#*Circumlocution:
#*: (literally "first child of Mrs Queen") = King Charles III, then known through his relation to the Queen.
#A reduced grammar: lack of copula, determiners; reduced set of prepositions, and conjunctions
#Less differentiated phonology: and are not distinguished in Tok Pisin (they are in free variation). The sibilants , , , , , and are also not distinguished.
#:All of the English words ''fish'', ''peach'', ''feast'', ''piss'', and ''peace'' would have been realised in Tok Pisin as . In fact, the Tok Pisin means "fish" (and usually has a sound closer to [], almost like the English word ''piss''). English ''piss'' was reduplicated to keep it distinct: thus means "urine" or "to urinate".
#:Likewise, in Tok Pisin could have represented English ''ship'', ''jib'', ''jeep'', ''sieve'', ''sheep'', or ''chief''. In fact, it means "ship".

Circumlocution and synonyms

The use of circumlocutions to compensate for limited vocabulary is a familiar process in pidgin languages. Tok Pisin is no different: consider '' bel i no laikim kaikai'' "food intolerance" (literally "the belly does not like the food"). In other cases, Tok Pisin speakers borrow words from other languages (most often English) to express unfamiliar concepts.

This frequent use of circumlocutions and borrowing of words for English has led to less frequently used words often possessing a large number of synonyms; toilet paper has three Tok Pisin terms: '' pepa bilong toilet'' (literally "paper for the toilet")'', pekpek pepa'' (literally "feces paper"), and ''toilet pepa'' (from English "toilet paper").

However, Tok Pisin has become especially known for its supposed use of very lengthy circumlocutions. Two commonly-cited examples relate to the piano and the helicopter.

The following Tok Pisin "names" for the piano were recorded by early 20th-century writers:

* ''big fellow box spose whiteman fight him he cry too much'' (1902)
* ''box belong cry'' ("screaming box") (1902)
* ''big fellow bokkes, suppose missis he fight him, he cry too much'' (1911)
* ''bigfela bokis yu fait-im i krai'' (1921)
* ''bikpela bokis bilong krai taim yu paitim na kikim em'' (1969)

Linguists observe that these circumlocutions are unstable ''ad hoc'' descriptions of an object, rather than set "words" or names. The situation is comparable to a Tok Pisin-English dictionary's definition of a Tok Pisin word with no English equivalent, such as ''milis'' being defined as "coconut milk made from shedding coconut meat in the water of a ripe nut"; nobody would suggest that this lengthy expression is the "English name" for this drink.

Secondly, it is often claimed that ''mixmaster bilong Jesus Christ'' is the Tok Pisin word for "helicopter" (the Sunbeam Mixmaster was an electric food processor popular in the United States and Australia). This factoid appeared as early as 1965 and still circulates online today. However, the phrase appears to be a fabrication by expatriates working in New Guinea. Linguists point out that helicopters, introduced to New Guinea by oil search teams, would have been far more familiar to early Tok Pisin speakers than electric food processors.

Vocabulary

Many words in the Tok Pisin language are derived from English (with Australian influences), indigenous Melanesian languages, and German (part of the country was under German rule until 1919). Some examples:
* = "bottom", "cause", "beginning" (from ''ass''/''arse''). = "his birthplace". = "the stump of a tree".
* = "broken", "to break down" (from ''bugger up''). The word is commonly used, with no vulgar undertone, in Tok Pisin and even in Papua New Guinea English.
** = "completely broken"
* = "bird" or more specifically a pigeon or dove (an Austronesian loan word); by extension "aeroplane"
* = "angry" ()
* = "bell", as in = "church bell". By extension "lunch" or "midday break" (from the bell rung to summon diners to the table). A fanciful derivation has been suggested from the "bellows" of horns used by businesses to indicate the beginning of the lunch hour, but this seems less likely than the straightforward derivation.
* = "petrol/gasoline" (from German )
* = "why?"
* = "brown"
* = "betelnut"
* = "grandparent", any elderly relation; also "grandchild". Possibly from Hiri Motu, where it is a familiar form of "tubu", as in "tubuna" or "tubugu".
* = "tree", "wood", "plant", "stick", etc.
* = "pregnant" (; = "fertility")
* = "hair" (from ''grass'')
* = "hello" (from '' g'day'')
* = "good"
* = "happy"
* = a piece of, as in = a piece of wood (from ''half'')
** = "the other side" (from ''half side'')
** = "purple" (from ''half red'')
* = "house" or "building" (from German and/or English ''house'')
** = "a male/female domestic servant"; can also mean "servants quarters"
** = restaurant ("house ffood")
** = "bank" ("house fmoney")
** = "hospital" ("house fsick")
** = "animal hospital" ("house fdog sick")
** = "place of mourning" ("house fcry")
** (vulgar) = "toilet" ("shit house"), also:
*** = "toilet"
*** = "toilet/bathroom" ("small house")
** = "traditional Sepik-region house with artifacts of ancestors or for honoring ancestors; means "ancestor spirit" or "ghost"
* = "heavy", "problem". = "he has a big problem".
* = "catch fish" (from ''hook'')
* = "food", "eat", "to bite" (Austronesian loan word)
** = "breakfast"
** = "dinner/supper"
* = "chicken" (probably onomatapoetic, from the crowing of the rooster)
* = "arrive", "become" (from ''come up'')
* = "get", "take" (from ''get them'')
* = "church", "worship" from Fijian, but sometimes is used for "church"
* = "wallaby"
** = "kangaroo" ("big wallaby")
* = "small boy"; by extension, "young man" (probably from the English jocular/affectionate usage ''monkey'', applied to mischievous children, although a derivation from the German , meaning "little man", has also been suggested)
* = "people" (from "man" and "woman")
* = "it doesn't matter", "don't worry about it" (probably from German = "it doesn't matter")
* = "moustache" ("mouth grass")
* = "woman" (from the English name ''Mary''); also "female", e.g., () = cow.
* = "all" (from ''all together'')
* = "what?", "what's going on?" (literally "like what"?); sometimes used as an informal greeting, similar to ''what's up?'' in English
* - homosexual man, or transsexual woman
* = "bird" (from ''pigeon''). (The homophony of this word with the name of the language has led to a limited association between the two; Mian speakers, for example, refer to Tok Pisin as , literally "bird language".)
* = "close", "lock" (from ''fasten'')
** = "shut up", "be quiet", i.e. , literally "you close mouth" = "shut up!"
* = "wrong", "confused", i.e. = "he is confused" (from English ''foul'')
* = "child", ultimately from Portuguese-influenced Lingua franca; cf. English ''pickaninny''
* = "thief, criminal" (from ''rascal'')
* ( is the transitive form) = "get out, throw out, remove" (from German meaning "out")
* = "frog" (probably onomatopoeic)
* = "if" (from ''suppose'')
* = "know", "to do habitually" (ultimately from Portuguese-influenced Lingua franca, cf. English ''savvy'')
* = "remnant" (from ''shit'')
* = "ocean" (from ''salt water'')
* = "soap"; also
** = "toothpaste"
** = "shampoo"
* = "stay", "be (somewhere)", "live" (from ''stop'')
* = "sister", nowadays very commonly supplanted by . Some Tok Pisin speakers use for a sibling of the opposite gender, while a sibling of the same gender as the speaker is a .
* = "milk, breasts" (from Malay )
* = "forbidden", but also "in-laws" (mother-in-law, brother-in-law, etc.) and other relatives whom one is forbidden to speak to, or mention the name of, in some PNG customs (from ''tabu'' or ''tambu'' in various Austronesian languages, the origin of Eng. ''taboo'')
* = "only, just"; "but" (from ''that's all'')
* = "English language"
* = "one", "a" (indefinite article).

Example text

Article 1 of the ''Universal Declaration of Human Rights'' in Tok Pisin:
:

Article 1 of the ''Universal Declaration of Human Rights'' in English:
:''All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.''

Notes

Citations

References

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Further reading

*'' Throwim Way Leg'' by Tim Flannery

External links

Tok Pisin Translation, Resources, and Discussion
Offers Tok Pisin translator, vocabulary, and discussion groups.
Tok Pisin (New Guinea Pidgin) English Bilingual Dictionary
* Tok Pisin phrasebook on Wikivoyage
A bibliography of Tok Pisin dictionaries, phrase books and study guidesRevising the Mihalic Project
, a collaborative internet project to revise and update Fr. Frank Mihalic's ''Grammar and Dictionary of Neo-Melanesian''. An illustrated online dictionary of Tok Pisin.

by Jeff Siegel
Radio Australia Tok Pisin serviceTok Pisin Radio on YoutubeBuk Baibel long Tok Pisin (The Bible in Tok Pisin)
Anglican liturgy of Holy Communion in Tok Pisin
''Tokpisin Grammar Workbook for English Speakers. A Practical Approach to Learning the Sentence Structure of Melanesian Pidgin (or Tokpisin).''
– with recorded dialogs, children's ditties and a hymn


Tok Pisin Swadesh List
by Rosetta Project
*Audio and video recordings of a Tok Pisin event
Traditional "house cry"/"kisim sori na kam" ceremony for big man Paul Ine
Archived with Kaipuleohone

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English-based pidgins and creoles
Languages of Papua New Guinea
Subject–verb–object languages