TOK PISIN

'Tok Pisin' (''tok'' means "word" or "speech" as in "talk", ''pisin'' means "pidgin") is the creole spoken in northern mainland Papua New Guinea, the National Capital District, and the New Guinea Islands. It is one of the official languages of Papua New Guinea and the most widely used language in that country, spoken by about 4 million people as a second language and over a hundred thousand as a first 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, 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. 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's a first language for some people and not merely a lingua franca to facilitate communication with speakers of other languages. Since its formation, it has been steadily developing a more complex and distinctive grammar as it has undergone creolization.

Contents

Classification

Official status

Regional variations

Sounds

Consonants

Vowels

Grammar

Development of Tok Pisin

Tenses of Tok Pisin

Vocabulary

Example of Tok Pisin

Sound files

References

External links

Classification

The Tok Pisin language is a result of intermixing Pacific Islanders, who spoke numerous different languages as they were sent to work on plantations in Queensland and various islands (''see South Sea Islander and Blackbirding''). The labourers began to develop a pidgin, based primarily on English. The pidgin also took vocabulary from German, Portuguese and various Austronesian languages spoken on these labourers' islands of origin. This English-based pidgin evolved into Tok Pisin in German New Guinea (where the German-based creole Unserdeutsch was also spoken). 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. 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.

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. 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.

Sounds

Tok Pisin, like many pidgins and creoles, has a far simpler phonology than the superstrate language. It has 16 consonants and 5 vowels. However, this varies with the local substrate languages and the level of education of the speaker. 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
Fricative
Nasal
Lateral
Approximant
Rhotic consonant

★ Where symbols appear in pairs the one to the left represents a voiceless consonant.

★ , , and can be either dental or alveolar consonants, while is only alveolar.

★ In most Tok Pisin dialects, is a tap or flap.

Vowels

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

	Front	Central	Back
Close
Mid
Open

Grammar

The verb has one suffix, ''-im'' (from "him") to indicate transitivity (''luk'', look; ''lukim'', see). 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". ''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 inclusiveness. 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,

	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. 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. Some phrases are used as prepositions, such as ''long namel (bilong)'', "in the middle of".

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.
#Casual contact between English speakers and local people developed a marginal pisin
#Pisin 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 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. 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:
#
★ :Tok Pisin: "vot"; English: "election" (n) and "vote" (v)
#
★ :Tok Pisin: "hevi"; English: "heavy" (adj) and "weight" (n)
#
★ Metaphors:
#
★ :Tok Pisin: "screw of the arm"; English: "elbow"
#
★ :Tok Pisin: "grass of the head"; English: "hair" (Hall, 1966: 90f)
#A reduced grammar: lack of copula, prepositions, determiners and conjunctions
#Less differentiated phonology: and are not distinguished in Tok Pisin (they are in free variation). The sibilants , , , , , and are also not distinguished.
#:"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.
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):
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).

★ bagarap(im) - ''broken'', ''to break down'' (from "bugger up") - very widely used in Papua New Guinea

★ bagarap olgeta - ''completely broken''

★ balus - ''airplane'' (from Melanesian word for "bird")

★ bikpela - ''big''

★ haus - ''house''

★
★ haus meri - ''female domestic servant''

★
★ haus moni - ''bank''

★
★ haus sik - ''hospital''

★
★ haus dok sik - ''Vet''

★
★ haus karai - ''place of mourning''

★
★ sit haus - ''toilet'', also:

★
★ liklik haus - ''toilet''

★
★ haus tambaran - ''traditional Sepik-region house'' with artifacts of ancestors or for honoring ancestors; ''tambaran'' means "ancestor spirit" or "ghost"

★ hukim pis - ''to catch fish'' (from "hook")

★ kaikai - ''food'', ''eat''

★ kamap - ''arrive'', ''become'' (from "come up")

★ kisim - ''get'', ''take''

★ mangi - ''young man'', formerly ''child'' (from German "männchen" = "small man" in colonial era - not, as commonly believed, from "monkey")

★ maski - ''it doesn't matter'', ''don't worry about it''

★ manmeri - ''people''

★ meri - ''woman'' (from the English name "Mary")

★ olgeta - ''all'' (from "all together")

★ pikinini - ''child'' (from Pacific Pidgin English, but ultimately from Portuguese influenced Lingua franca, cf, ''pickaninny'')

★ Papa Got - ''God''

★ raus(im) - ''get out'' (from German "raus")

★ sapos - ''if'' (from "suppose")

★ save - ''know'', ''to do habitually'' (from Pacific Pidgin English, but ultimately from Portuguese influenced Lingua franca, cf. "savvy")

★ solwara - ''ocean'' (from "salt water")

★ stap - ''be'', ''stay'' (from "stop")

★ slip - ''sleep'', ''live''

★ tasol - ''but'', ''only'' (from "that's all")

★ lotu - ''church''

★ belo - ''lunch''

★ gat bel - ''pregnant''

★ hamamas - ''happy''

★ belhat - ''angry''

★ bubu - ''grandparent''

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 ''(note there is not a one-to-one correlation)'':
: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,
: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

References

★ The Jacaranda Dictionary and Grammar of Melanesian Pidgin, , Francis, Mihalic, Jacaranda Press, ,

★ The Book of Pidgin English, , John Joseph, Murphy, Robert Brown, 1985,

★ Growing Up With Tok Pisin: Contact, Creolization, and Change in Papua New Guinea's National Language, , Geoff P., Smith, Battlebridge Publications, 2002,

★ A New Course in Tok Pisin (New Guinea Pidgin), , Thomas Edward, Dutton, Australian National University, 1985,

★ Handbook of Tok Pisin (New Guinea Pidgin), , S. A., Wurm, Pacific Linguistics, 1985,

★ Nupela Testamen bilong Bikpela Jisas Kraist, , , , The Bible Society of Papua New Guinea, ,

External links

★

★

★ Tok Pisin Translation, Resources, and Discussion Offers Tok Pisin translator, vocabulary, and discussion groups.

★ on

★ A bibliography of Tok Pisin dictionaries, phrase books and study guides

★ Revising 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.

★ Tok Pisin background, vocabulary, sounds, and grammar, by Jeff Siegel

★ Ethnologue report for Tok Pisin

★ Radio Australia Tok Pisin service

★ Robert Eklund's Tok Pisin Page

★ Pidgin/English Dictionary as spoken in Port Moresby

★ ''Tokpisin Grammar Workbook for English Speakers. A Practical Approach to Learning the Sentence Structure of Melanesian Pidgin (or Tokpisin).''