Topic summary
Tok Pisin language
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Tok Pisin.
Classification
The Tok Pisin language is a result of Pacific Islanders intermixing. When colonial authorities forced people speaking numerous different languages to work on plantations in Queensland and various islands during 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).