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Tok Pisin
Spoken in: Papua New Guinea
Total speakers: 5-6 million; approx. Papua New Guinea (or ˈpæpjuːə in Tok Pisin: Papua Niugini) officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania 1 million native speakers
Language family: Creole language
 English Creole
  Pacific
   Tok Pisin 
Official status
Official language in: Papua New Guinea
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: tpi
ISO 639-3: tpi
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable Language that originates seemingly as a nativized Pidgin. An English-based creole language, or English creole for short is a Creole language that was significantly influenced by the English language. Papua New Guinea (or ˈpæpjuːə in Tok Pisin: Papua Niugini) officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania This is a list of bodies that regulate Standard languages Natural languages Auxiliary languages Interlingua The auxiliary language ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages ISO 639 -3 (ISO 639-32007 is an international standard for Language codes The standard describes three‐letter codes for identifying languages In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's

Tok Pisin (tok means "word" or "speech" as in "talk", pisin means "pidgin") is a creole spoken throughout Papua New Guinea; in parts of Western, Gulf, Central, Oro and Milne Bay Provinces familiarity with Tok Pisin may be less universal, especially among older people. A pidgin is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common in situations such as Trade A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable Language that originates seemingly as a nativized Pidgin. Papua New Guinea (or ˈpæpjuːə in Tok Pisin: Papua Niugini) officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania It is an official language of Papua New Guinea and the most widely used language in that country.

Between 5 and 6 million people use Tok Pisin to some degree. Between 1 and 2 million are exposed to it as a first language, including children in areas with dominant vernacular languages whose parents and siblings speak to them first in Tok Pisin before teaching them their own language, and perhaps 1 million use Tok Pisin as a primary language.

Tok Pisin is also—perhaps more commonly in English—called New Guinea Pidgin and, largely in academic contexts, Melanesian Pidgin English or Neo-Melanesian.

Given that Papua New Guinean anglophones almost invariably refer to Tok Pisin as Pidgin when speaking English (and note that the courts of Papua New Guinea refer to it as "Pidgin" in the published reports: See for example Schubert v The State [1979] PNGLR 66) it may be considered something of an affectation to call it Tok Pisin, much like referring to German and French as Deutsch and français in English. An Anglophone (or anglophone) is someone who speaks the English language. However, Tok Pisin is favored by many professional linguists to avoid spreading the misconception that Tok Pisin is still a pidgin language; although it was originally a pidgin, Tok Pisin is now considered a distinct language in its own right because it is a first language for some people and not merely a lingua franca to facilitate communication with speakers of other languages. A pidgin is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common in situations such as Trade A lingua franca (from Italian, literally meaning Frankish language, see etymology under Sabir and Italian below is any Language widely Since its formation, it has been steadily developing a more complex and distinctive grammar as it has undergone creolization. A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable Language that originates seemingly as a nativized Pidgin.

Contents

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 Australian label South Sea Islanders refers to the Australian descendants of people from the more than 80 islands in the Western Pacific including the Solomon Islands Blackbirding refers to the recruitment of people through trickery and Kidnappings to work on plantations particularly the Sugar cane Plantations of The labourers began to develop a pidgin, drawing vocabulary primarily on English, but also from German, Portuguese and their own Austronesian languages (such as from the Tolai people of East New Britain). The Tolai are the indigenous people of the Gazelle Peninsula and the Duke of York Islands of East New Britain in the New Guinea Islands region East New Britain is a province of Papua New Guinea, on the island of New Britain. This English-based pidgin evolved into Tok Pisin in German New Guinea (where the German-based creole Unserdeutsch was also spoken). German New Guinea ( Ger Deutsch-Neuguinea) was a former German Protectorate from 1884 to 1914 consisting of the northeastern part of Unserdeutsch ("Our German" or Rabaul Creole German, is a German-based creole language spoken primarily in Papua New Guinea and the northeast It became the lingua franca—and language of interaction between rulers and ruled and among the ruled themselves who did not share a common vernacular; the closely-related Bislama in Vanuatu, and Pijin in the Solomon Islands developed in parallel. Bislama is a Creole language, one of the official languages of Vanuatu. Its flourishing in German New Guinea despite the language of the metropolitan power being German, obviously, rather than English, is to be contrasted 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. Hiri Motu, Police Motu or Pidgin Motu is an official Language of Papua New Guinea. Motu (sometimes called Pure Motu or True Motu to distinguish it from Hiri Motu) is one of many Central Papuan languages spoken by the Motuans ||-||-||-||-||-||} Port Moresby (ˌpɔrt ˈmɔrzbi or Pot Mosbi in Tok Pisin, population 255000 (2000 is the Capital and largest city of Papua

Official status

Along with English and Hiri Motu, Tok Pisin is one of the three official languages of Papua New Guinea. It is frequently the language of debate in the national parliament. The National Parliament of Papua New Guinea is the unicameral national legislature in Papua New Guinea. Most government documents are 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 (Pidgin speakers from Finschafen speak rather quickly and often have difficulty making themselves understood elsewhere) and the New Guinea Islands. 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. The Solomon Islands is a country in Melanesia, east of Papua New Guinea, consisting of nearly one thousand islands

Sounds

Tok Pisin, like many pidgins and creoles, has a far simpler phonology than the superstrate language. In Contact linguistics, a substratum ( lat sub: under + stratum: layer → lower layer) is a Language It has 16 consonants and 5 vowels. However, this varies with the local substrate languages and the level of education of the speaker. In Contact linguistics, a substratum ( lat sub: under + stratum: layer → lower layer) is a Language The following is the "core" phonemic inventory, common to virtually all varieties of Tok Pisin. 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 han. Furthermore, voiced plosives become voiceless at the ends of words, so that English pig is rendered as pik in Tok Pisin.

Consonants

Labial Coronal Palatal Velar Glottal
Plosive p b t d k g
Fricative v s h
Nasal m n ŋ
Lateral l
Approximant w j
Rhotic consonant r

Vowels

Tok Pisin has five vowels, similar to the vowels of Spanish, Japanese, and many other five-vowel languages:

Front Central Back
Close i u
Mid e o
Open a

Grammar

The verb has one suffix, -im (from "him") to indicate transitivity (luk, look; lukim, see). is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities A front vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward A central vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between A back vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as A close vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in many spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as A mid vowel is a Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an An open vowel is a Vowel sound of a type used in most spoken Languages The defining characteristic of an open vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far as For English usage of verbs see the wiki article English verbs. But some verbs, such as kaikai "eat", can be transitive without it. Tense is indicated by the separate words bai (future) and bin (past) (from "been"). The present progressive tense is indicated by the word stap - e. g. "eating" is kaikai stap (or this can be seen as having a "food stop").

The noun does not indicate number, though pronouns do.

Adjectives usually take the suffix -pela (from "fellow") when modifying nouns; an exception is liklik "little". In Grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a Noun or Pronoun, giving more information about the Liklik can also be used as an adverb meaning "slightly", as in dispela bikpela liklik ston, "this slightly big stone".

Pronouns show person, number, and clusivity. In Linguistics and Grammar, a pronoun is a Pro-form that substitutes for a (including a noun phrase consisting of a single Noun) with or Grammatical person, in Linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event such as the speaker the Addressee, or others In linguistics grammatical number is a Grammatical category of nouns pronouns and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one" In Linguistics, clusivity is a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person Pronouns and Verbal morphology, The paradigm varies depending on the local languages; dual number is common, while the trial is less so. Dual is a Grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and Plural. In linguistics grammatical number is a Grammatical category of nouns pronouns and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one" The largest Tok Pisin pronoun inventory is,

Singular Dual Trial Plural
1st exclusive mi
(I)		 mitupela
(he/she and I)		 mitripela
(both of them, and I)		 mipela
(all of them, and I)
1st inclusive - yumitupela
(thou and I)		 yumitripela
(both of you, and I)		 yumipela or yumi
(all of you, and I)
2nd yu
(thou)		 yutupela
(you two)		 yutripela
(you three)		 yupela
(you four or more)
3rd em
(he/she)		 tupela
(they two)		 tripela
(they three)		 ol
(they four or more)

Reduplication is very common in Tok Pisin. Reduplication, in Linguistics, is a morphological Process by which the root or stem of a Word, or part of it is repeated Sometimes it is used as a method of derivation; sometimes words just have it. Some words are distinguished only by reduplication: sip "ship", sipsip "sheep".

There are only two proper prepositions: bilong (from "belong"), which means "of" or "for", and long, which means everything else. In Grammar, a preposition is a Part of speech that introduces a prepositional phrase. Some phrases are used as prepositions, such as long namel (bilong), "in the middle of". In Grammar, a phrase is a group of Words that functions as a single unit in the Syntax of a sentence.

Development of Tok Pisin

Tok Pisin is a language that developed out of regional dialects of the languages of the local inhabitants and English, brought into the country when English speakers arrived. There were four phases in the development of Tok Pisin that were laid out by Loreto Todd.

  1. Casual contact between English speakers and local people developed a marginal pisin
  2. Pisin English was used between the local people. The language expanded from the users' mother tongue
  3. As the interracial contact increased the vocabulary expanded according to the dominant language.
  4. In areas where English was 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 the English language: i. e. English is its lexifier. The origin of the syntax is a matter of debate. Hymes (Hymes 1971b: 5) claims that the syntax is from the substratum languages: i. e. the languages of the local peoples. (Hymes 1971b: 5). 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. Derek Bickerton (born March 25, 1926) is a linguist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawaii, Manoa 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:

  1. A smaller vocabulary which leads to metaphors to supply lexical units:
    • Smaller vocabulary:
      Tok Pisin: "vot"; English: "election" (n) and "vote" (v)
      Tok Pisin: "hevi"; English: "heavy" (adj) and "weight" (n)
    • Metaphors:
      Tok Pisin: "skru bilong han" (screw of the arm); English: "elbow" (This is almost always just "skru" - hardly ever distinguished as "skru bilong han"). Metaphor (from the Greek: μεταφορά - metaphora, meaning "transfer" is language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects The elbow is the region surrounding the elbow-joint&mdashthe ginglymus or Hinge joint in the middle of the Arm.
      Tok Pisin: "gras bilong het" (grass of the head); English: "hair" (Hall, 1966: 90f)(Most commonly just "gras" -- see note on "skru bilong han" above).
  2. A reduced grammar: lack of copula, prepositions, determiners and conjunctions
  3. Less differentiated phonology: [p] and [f] are not distinguished in Tok Pisin (they are in free variation). In Grammar, a preposition is a Part of speech that introduces a prepositional phrase. The sibilants /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/, and /dʒ/ are also not distinguished. A sibilant is a type of Fricative or Affricate Consonant, made by directing a jet of air through a narrow channel in the Vocal tract towards
    "pis" in Tok Pisin could mean in English: "beads", "beach", "fish", "peach", "piss", "feast" or "peace".
    "sip" in Tok Pisin could mean in English: "ship", "jib", "jeep", "sieve" or "chief"

Tenses of Tok Pisin

Past Tense: Marked by "bin": Tok Pisin: "Na praim minista i bin tok olsem". English: "And the prime minister spoke thus". (Romaine 1991: 629)

Continuative Same Tense is expressed through: Verb + i stap. Tok Pisin: "Em i slip i stap". English: "He/ She is sleeping". (ibid. : 631)

Completive or perfective aspect expressed through the word "pinis" (from English: finish): Tok Pisin: "Em i lusim bot pinis". English: "He had got out of the boat". (Mühlhäusler 1984: 462).

Transitive words are expressed through "-im" (from English: him): Tok Pisin: "Yu pinisim stori nau. " English: "Finish your story now!". (ibid. : 640).

Future is expressed through the word "bai" (from English: by and by): Tok Pisin: "Em bai ol i go long rum" English: "They will go to their rooms now. (Mühlhäusler 1991: 642).

The ending -pela is used as a plural marker and for adjectives and determiners. Tok Pisin: "Dispela boi" --> English: "This bloke". Tok Pisin: "Mipela" --> English: "We". Tok Pisin: "Yupela" --> English: "You all". (ibid. 640f).

The Preposition "long" in Tok Pisin stands for "at, in, on, to, with, until" in English and "bilong" in Tok Pisin stands for "of, from, for" in English:

Tok Pisin: "Mipela i go long blekmaket". --> English: "We went to the black market".

Tok Pisin: "Ki bilong yu" --> English: "your key"

Tok Pisin: "Ol bilong Godons". --> English: "They are from Gordon's". (ibid. 640f).

Vocabulary

Tok Pisin can sound very colourful in its use of words, which are derived from English (with Australian influences), indigenous Melanesian languages and German (part of the country was under German rule until 1914). English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Australia topics. Melanesia (from Greek: μέλας black, νῆσος island) means "islands of the black-skinned people" The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. Year 1914 ( MCMXIV) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common year

Example of Tok Pisin

The Lord's Prayer in Tok Pisin:

Papa bilong mipela
Yu stap long heven.
Nem bilong yu i mas i stap holi.
Kingdom bilong yu i mas i kam.
Strongim mipela long bihainim laik bilong yu long graun,
olsem ol i bihainim long heven.
Givim mipela kaikai inap long tude.
Pogivim rong bilong mipela,
olsem mipela i pogivim ol arapela i mekim rong long mipela.
Sambai long mipela long taim bilong traim.
Na rausim olgeta samting nogut long mipela.
Kingdom na strong na glori, em i bilong yu tasol oltaim oltaim.
Tru.

The Lord's Prayer in English:

Our father,
who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil,
for the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever.
Amen

Sound files

Recorded dialogs, children's ditties are found at Robert Eklund's Tok Pisin website: http://roberteklund.info/PNG-TokPisin.htm

See also

References

External links

||-||-||-||-||-||} Port Moresby (ˌpɔrt ˈmɔrzbi or Pot Mosbi in Tok Pisin, population 255000 (2000 is the Capital and largest city of Papua

Dictionary

Tok Pisin

-proper noun

  1. A creole of Indo-European, Malayo-Polynesian and Trans-New-Guinean languages (principally English and Tolai); one of the official languages of Papua New Guinea.
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