| Broome Pearling Lugger Pidgin | |
|---|---|
| Region | Broome, Western Australia |
Native speakers | None[1] L2 speakers: 40 (no date)[1] |
Malay-based creole
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | bpl |
| Glottolog | broo1238 |
| AIATSIS[2] | P3 |
Broome Pearling Lugger Pidgin is apidgin that sprang up inBroome, Western Australia in the early 20th century to facilitate communication between the various groups working in thepearling industry there—Japanese,Malays,Torres Strait Islanders,Koepangers,Hakka Chinese,Filipinos,Sri Lankans ofSinhalese andTamil descent, a small number ofKoreans, and localIndigenous Australians,[3] mainly of theBardi people but alsoNyulnyul,Jabirr Jabirr,Jukun,Yawuru andKarajarri people. The name derives from the boats used for pearling, known aspearling luggers.
Its words come primarily from theMalay language (specificallyKupang Malay), but it also took some words and grammatical features fromHakka,Japanese,English (through theAustralian Aboriginal Pidgin English), and the localAustralian Aboriginal languages.
For example, the following sentence contains a Malay verb and Japanese grammatical particles, with the remaining words coming from English:
| Chirikurok | -kaa | hokurok | -kaa | peke | kriki. |
| English: "three o'clock" | Japanese: "or" | English: "four o'clock" | Japanese: "or" | Malay: "go" | English: "creek" |
| "We will enter the creek at three or four o'clock." | |||||
Broome Pearling Lugger Pidgin is no longer in active use, but some words and phrases that originated in the pidgin are still used by younger generations of Asian-Aboriginals as a marker ofethnic isolationism.
