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 fromMadang and a father fromRabaul). Urban families in particular, and those ofpolice anddefence force members, often communicate among themselves in Tok Pisin, either never gaining fluency in a local language (tok ples) or learning a local language as a second (or third) language after Tok Pisin (and possiblyEnglish). Over the decades, Tok Pisin has increasingly overtakenHiri Motu as the dominantlingua franca among town-dwellers.[6] Perhaps one million people now use Tok Pisin as a primary language. Tok Pisin is slowly "crowding out" otherlanguages of Papua New Guinea.[7][6]
A 1971 reference book on Tok Pisin (referring to the language asMelanesian Pidgin)Hotel room door signs in Papua New Guinea
Tok originates from Englishtalk, but has a wider application, also meaning 'word, speech, language'.[8]Pisin derives from the English wordpidgin;[8] the latter, in turn, may originate in the wordbusiness, due to the typical development and use of pidgins as inter-ethnic trade languages.[9]
While Tok Pisin's name in the language isTok Pisin, it is also called "New Guinea Pidgin"[10] in English. Papua New Guineananglophones often call Tok Pisin "Pidgin" when speaking English.[note 1] This usage of "Pidgin" (with capital P) differs from the termpidgin (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 alingua franca to facilitate communication with speakers of other languages). As such, it is considered acreole in linguistic terminology.[note 2]
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 duringblackbirding, the labourers began to develop a pidgin drawing vocabulary primarily from English, but also fromGerman,Malay,Portuguese, and their ownAustronesian languages (perhaps especiallyKuanua, that of theTolai people ofEast New Britain).
This English-based pidgin evolved into Tok Pisin inGerman New Guinea (where the German-based creoleUnserdeutsch was also spoken), which became a widely used lingua franca between colonial authorities and the indigenous population. Tok Pisin and the closely relatedBislama inVanuatu andPijin in theSolomon 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 withHiri Motu, the lingua franca ofPapua, which derived not from English but fromMotu, the language of the indigenous people of thePort Moresby area.
Tok Pisinphonology and grammar strongly resembles Bislama and Pijin, but contrasts in several ways. The genitive preposition, derived from Englishbelong, isbilong in Tok Pisin, butblong in Bislama and Pijin.[11][12] Similarly, the adjectival ending derived from Englishfellow is-pela in Tok Pisin, but-fala in Bislama and Pijin. Certain phonological changes also occurred differently between Tok Pisin and Bislama.
A bilingual sign in English and Tok Pisin, displayed at theLae War Cemetery (Lae, Papua New Guinea).
Along withEnglish andHiri Motu, Tok Pisin is one of Papua New Guinea's three official languages. It is frequently the language of debate in thenational 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.
There are considerable variations in vocabulary and grammar in various parts of Papua New Guinea, with distinct dialects in theNew Guinea Highlands, the north coast of Papua New Guinea, and islands outside of New Guinea. For example, Pidgin speakers fromFinschhafen speak rather quickly and often have difficulty making themselves understood elsewhere. The variant spoken onBougainville andBuka is moderately distinct from that ofNew Ireland andEast New Britain but is much closer to that than it is to thePijin spoken in the rest of the Solomon Islands.
Tok Pisin's current alphabet has 21letters, five of which arevowels, and fourdigraphs.[14] The letters are (vowels initalics):
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,⟨ai⟩,⟨au⟩, and⟨oi⟩, denotediphthongs; the fourth,⟨ng⟩, is used for both/ŋ/ and/ŋɡ/.
Prior to the creation of the current orthography by the colonial Department of Education in 1955 to increase literacy, colonial administrators spelled Tok Pisin etymologically, spelling each Tok Pisin word identically to its original spelling in the language that the word derived from.[15] However, this spelling system did not have a standardized spelling of certain terms and often made incorrect assumptions about the etymology of certain words; older publications spelled Tok Pisini as "he" when the word actually originates from Englishis or a term in an unknownAustronesian language.
For example, a 1953 article in an Australian newspaper quotes a Papua New Guinean man as saying:[16]
Before, me fellow school long other fella mission, tasol imi hidim half talk, now Seven Day imi kamapim altogether talk. Me fellow please too much you go along house sick bilong Seven Day now kisim good fellow story now schoolim me fellow. Seven Day Mission something true.
In current Tok Pisin orthography, this paragraph would be spelled as:
Bipo, mipela skul long narapela misin, tasol i haitim hap tok, nau Sevin De i kamapim olgeta tok. Mipela plis tumas yu go long haus sik bilong Sevin De nau kisim gutpela stori nau skulim mipela. Sevin De Misin i samting tru.
"In the past, I belonged another church, but it hid parts of the truth; the Seventh Day Adventist church reveals the whole truth. We often go to the Seventh Day Adventist hospital to get good information. The Seventh Day Adventist church is the true church."
Tok Pisin has a smaller number ofphonemes than itslexifier language,English.[17] It has around 24 core phonemes:[17] 5vowels and around 19consonants. This varies with the localsubstrate 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., Englishhand becomes Tok Pisinhan. Furthermore,voiced plosives become voiceless at the ends of words, so that Englishpig is rendered aspik in Tok Pisin.
/t/,/d/, and/l/ can be either dental or alveolar consonants, while/n/ is only alveolar.
In most Tok Pisin dialects, the phoneme/r/ is pronounced as thealveolar tap or flap,[ɾ]. There can be variation between/r/ and/l/.[18]
The labiodental fricatives/fv/ may be marginal, with contrastive use present only in heavily Anglicized varieties.[17] The use of/f/ vs./p/ is variable.[19] There is also variation between/f/ and/v/ in some words, such asfaif/faiv 'five'.[20]
Theverb has a suffix,-im (< Eng.him) to indicatetransitivity (luk, "look";lukim, "see"). But some verbs, such askaikai "eat", can be transitive without it. Tense is indicated by the separate wordsbai (future) (< Eng.by and by) andbin (past) (< Eng.been). The present progressive tense is indicated by the wordstap; e.g.,Hem kaikai stap "He is eating".
Thenoun does not indicate number, though pronouns do.
Adjectives usually take the suffix-pela (now often pronounced-pla, though more so for pronouns, and-pela for adjectives; from "fellow") when modifying nouns; an exception isliklik "little".[note 3] It is also found on numerals and determiners:
mitripela (both of them, and I) Eng. *me three fellow
mipela (all of them, and I) Eng. *me fellow
1st inclusive
–
yumitupela (you and I) < Eng. *you me two fellow
yumitripela (both of you, and I) < Eng. *you me three fellow
yumipela or yumi (all of you, and I) < Eng. *you me fellow or *you me
2nd
yu (thou) < Eng.you
yutupela (you two) < Eng. *you two fellow
yutripela (you three) < Eng. *you three fellow
yupela (you four or more) < Eng. *you fellow
3rd
em (he/she/it) < Eng.him
tupela (they two) < Eng. *two fellow
tripela (they three) < Eng. *three fellow
ol (they four or more) < Eng.all
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:sip "ship",sipsip "sheep".
thegenitive prepositionbilong (etym. < Eng.belong), which is equivalent to "of", "from" and some uses of "for": e.g.Ki bilong yu "your key";Ol bilong Godons "They are from Gordon's".
theoblique prepositionlong (etym. < Eng.along), which is used for various other relations (such aslocative ordative): e.g.Mipela i bin go long blekmaket. "We went to the black market".
Somephrases are used as prepositions, such as 'long namel (bilong)', "in the middle of".
Several of these features derive from the common grammatical norms ofAustronesian languages,[note 4] usually in a simplified form. Other features, such asword order, are closer to English.
Sentences with a 3rd-person subject often put the wordi 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.,Kar i tambu long hia is "car forbidden here", i.e., "no parking".
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 itslexifier). 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.[27]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:
In some cases, the English plural form of nouns evolved into singular nouns in Tok Pisin. For example, the Tok Pisin word for "race" isresis, the word for "coconut" iskokonas, and the word for "tooth" istit.
Less differentiated phonology:[p] and[f] are not distinguished in Tok Pisin (they are in free variation). Thesibilants/s/,/z/,/ʃ/,/ʒ/,/tʃ/, and/dʒ/ are also not distinguished.
All of the English wordsfish,peach,feast,piss, andpeace would have been realised in Tok Pisin aspis. In fact, the Tok Pisinpis means "fish" (and usually has a sound closer to [ɪ], almost like the English wordpiss). Englishpiss was reduplicated to keep it distinct: thuspispis means "urine" or "to urinate".
Likewise,sip in Tok Pisin could have represented Englishship,jib,jeep,sieve,sheep, orchief. In fact, it means "ship".
The use ofcircumlocutions orperiphrases to express complex concepts is a familiar process in pidgin languages. Thus for Tok Pisin, considerbel 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 use of circumlocutions on the one hand, and borrowing of learned English words on the other, has led to less frequently used words often possessing one or two synonyms. The use of English derived terms to replace lengthy circumlocutions has become more common as Tok Pisin speakers are more exposed to English in their daily life.[29]
English term
Tok Pisin term derived from English
Tok Pisin circumlocution
antibiotic
antibaiotik
marasin bilong kilim ol binatang (medicine for killing germs)
bank
beng
haus moni (money building)
culture
kalsa
pasin tumbuna (practice of ancestors)
diabetes
daiabitis
sik suga (sugar disease)
diarrhea
dairia
pekpek wara (feces water)
disability
disabiliti
bagarap long bodi / long skin (malfunction in the body / under the skin)
hevi long bodi / long skin (problem in the body / under the skin)
discrimination
diskriminesen
daunim narapela (lowering another person)
pasin bilong bagarapim narapela man o meri (practice of harming another man or woman)
heater
hita
masin bilong hatim rum (machine for heating the rum)
marasin bilong klinim tit (medicine for cleaning the teeth)
Several circumlocutions have fallen out of use because they have inaccurate or offensive origins. For example, the older termsbinatang nogut andsik nogut (translating to "bad germ" and "bad disease") forHIV andAIDS have fallen out of use because they falsely imply that all people with the disease engaged in behaviors considered by many Papua New Guineans to be immoral, such as premarital sexual intercourse and drug use.[30] In reality, many people contract HIV prenatally or through faulty blood transfusions.
Two commonly-cited examples of circumlocutions relate to thepiano and thehelicopter. The following Tok Pisin "names" for the piano, the first four displayed in the older orthography with the current orthography in italicized parentheses and a literal translation in quotes, were recorded by early 20th-century writers:[31]: 227–8
big fellow box spose whiteman fight him he cry too much (bikpela bokis sapos waitman i paitim i krai tumas) "large box that cries if the white man hits it" (1902)
big fellow bokkes, suppose missis he fight him, he cry too much (bikpela bokis, sapos misis i paitim, i krai tumas) "large box that cries if the white woman hits it" (1911)
bigfela bokis yu fait-im i krai (bikpela bokis yu paitim i krai) "large box that cries when you hit it" (1921)
bikpela bokis bilong krai taim yu paitim na kikim em "large box that cries when you hit and kick it" (1969)
Linguists observe that these circumlocutions are unstablead 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 asmilis 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.[31]: 225
It is often claimed thatmixmaster bilongJesus Christ (miksmasta bilong Jisas Krais), an adposition translating to Jesus Christ's Mixmaster (theSunbeam Mixmaster was an electricfood processor popular in the United States and Australia), is the Tok Pisin word for "helicopter." Thisfactoid appeared as early as 1965[32] and still circulates online today. However, the phrase appears to be a fabrication byexpatriates working in New Guinea.[31]: 231 [33][34] Linguists point out that helicopters, introduced to New Guinea by oil search teams,[32] would have been far more familiar to early Tok Pisin speakers than electric food processors.[34]
Many words in the Tok Pisin language are derived fromEnglish (withAustralian influences), indigenousMelanesian languages, andGerman (part of the country was under German rule until 1919). Some examples:
as = "bottom", "cause", "beginning" (fromass/arse).As ples bilong em = "his birthplace".As bilong diwai = "the stump of a tree".
bagarap(im) = "broken", "to break down" (frombugger up). The word is commonly used, with no vulgar undertone, in Tok Pisin and even in Papua New Guinea English.
bagarap olgeta = "completely broken"
balus = "bird" or more specifically a pigeon or dove (an Austronesian loan word); by extension "aeroplane"
belo = "bell", as inbelo bilong lotu = "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.
bensin = "petrol/gasoline" (from GermanBenzin)
bilong wanem? = "why?"
braun = "brown"
buai = "betelnut"
bubu = "grandparent", any elderly relation; also "grandchild". Possibly fromHiri Motu, where it is a familiar form of "tubu", as in "tubuna" or "tubugu".
didiman = "male agricultural worker", derived from the surname of a colonial officer who worked in this profession
didimeri = "female agricultural worker"; the syllableman was reanalyzed as Tok Pisinman (from Englishman), giving rise to the corresponding termdidimeri by combining the first two syllables with Tok Pisinmeri ("woman", from EnglishMary)
kakaruk = "chicken" (probably onomatapoetic, from the crowing of the rooster)
kamap = "arrive", "become" (fromcome up)
kisim = "get", "take" (fromget them)
lotu = "church", "worship" from Fijian, but sometimessios is used for "church"
magani = "wallaby"
bikpela magani = "kangaroo" ("big wallaby")
mangi/manki = "small boy"; by extension, "young man" (probably from the English jocular/affectionate usagemonkey, applied to mischievous children, although a derivation from the GermanMännchen, meaning "little man", has also been suggested)
pisin = "bird" (frompigeon). (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 aswan weng, literally "bird language".)
susa = "sister", nowadays very commonly supplanted bysista. Some Tok Pisin speakers usesusa for a sibling of the opposite gender, while a sibling of the same gender as the speaker is ab(a)rata.
tambu = "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 (fromtabu ortambu invarious Austronesian languages, the origin of Eng.taboo)
Yumi olgeta mama karim umi long stap fri na wankain long wei yumi lukim i gutpela na strepela tru. Yumi olgeta igat ting ting bilong wanem samting i rait na rong na mipela olgeta i mas mekim gutpela pasin long ol narapela long tingting bilong brata susa.[35]
Article 1 of theUniversal 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.[36]
^The published court reports of Papua New Guinea refer to Tok Pisin as "Pidgin": see for exampleSchubert v The State [1979] PNGLR 66.
^See theGlottolog entry for Tok Pisin (itself evidence that the linguistic community considers it a language in its own right, and prefers to name itTok Pisin), as well as numerous references therein.
^Liklik can also be used as anadverb meaning "slightly", as indispela bikpela liklik ston, "this slightly big stone".
^The languageTolai isoften named[citation needed] as having had an important influence on early Tok Pisin.
Mühlhäusler, Peter; Dutton, Thomas Edward; Romaine, Suzanne (2003).Tok Pisin Texts from the Beginning to the Present. Varieties of English Around the World. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.doi:10.1075/veaw.t9.ISBN978-90-272-4718-6.
Mann, Milton (1972).New Guinea. This beautiful world. Tokyo: Kodansha International. p. 11.ISBN978-0-87011-166-2.
Mühlhäusler, Peter (1984). "Tok Pisin and its relevance to theoretical issues in creolistics and general linguistics".{{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help)
Mundhenk, Norm (1990). "Linguistic decisions in the Tok Pisin Bible".Melanesian Pidgin and Tok Pisin. Melanesian Pidgin and Tok Pisin: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Pidgins and Creoles in Melanesia. Studies in Language Companion Series. Vol. 20. p. 345.doi:10.1075/slcs.20.16mun.ISBN978-90-272-3023-2.
—— (1991). "The Pacific". In Cheshire, Jenny (ed.).English Around the World: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 619–636.doi:10.1017/CBO9780511611889.042.ISBN978-0-521-39565-6.
—— (1992).Language, education, and development: Urban and rural Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea. Oxford studies in language contact. Oxford: Clarendon Press.ISBN978-0-19-823966-6.
Smith, Geoff P. (2002).Growing Up With Tok Pisin: Contact, Creolization, and Change in Papua New Guinea's National Language. London: Battlebridge Publications.ISBN978-1-903292-06-8.OCLC49834526.
—— (2008). "Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea: phonology". In Burridge, Kate; Kortmann, Bernd (eds.).Varieties of English 3: The Pacific and Australasia. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 188–209.ISBN978-3-11-019637-5.
Verhaar, John W.M. (1995).Toward a Reference Grammar of Tok Pisin: An Experiment in Corpus Linguistics. Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications, no. 26. Vol. 26. Honolulu:University of Hawaiʻi Press.ISBN9780824816728.JSTOR20006762.{{cite book}}:|journal= ignored (help)
Volker, C.A. (2008).Papua New Guinea Tok Pisin English Dictionary. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-555112-9.
Wolfers, Edward (1971). "A report on Neo-Melanesian". InDell H. Hymes (ed.).Pidginization and Creolization of Languages. Proceedings of a conference held at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, April 1968. Cambridge University Press. pp. 413–422.ISBN9780521078337.
Wurm, S. A.; Mühlhäusler, P., eds. (1985).Handbook of Tok Pisin (New Guinea Pidgin). Languages For Intercultural Communication In The Pacific Area Project of The Australian Academy of The Humanities, no. 1. Australian National University:Pacific Linguistics.hdl:1885/145234.ISBN978-0-85883-321-0.OCLC12883165.
Revising the Mihalic ProjectArchived 2016-09-05 at theWayback Machine, a collaborative internet project to revise and update Fr. Frank Mihalic'sGrammar and Dictionary of Neo-Melanesian. An illustrated online dictionary of Tok Pisin.
.jpg)
