Tok Pisin: "The National Language of Papua New Guinea"

Prepared and written by Edward Etepa

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Contents

Map of Papua New Guinea
Introduction
Geography
Transcription of Tok Pisin

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Welcome to Papua New Guinea! The land of Emerging Tok Pisin

Welcome! You have decided to explore some of the distinct wonders here on earth. Wonders in its pristine nature and I therefore say "virtual Papua New Guinea".

Papua New Guinea is home of a newly born pidgin/creole which has been growing to meet the requirements of fully fledged languages we hear and know of in the world. Its structure, syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology, have some significant correlations with the indigenous languages, giving it a wonderful blend appreciated by its inhabitants despite heavy lexical borrowings from its super stratum.

Tok Pisin has and continues to play a vital role in uniting cultural and ethnolinguistic diversity. It is a nation that has more different peoples living in happy unity than any other nation on earth. Discover a landscape that staggers the senses by its sheer diversity and sometimes savage beauty. An almost untouched place of wonder that, though it has only 1% of the worlds land area, contains more than 5% of the worlds species of plants and animals. Find out all you need to know about this fledgling nation - nestled away in the South Pacific between Indonesia and Australia. See the sights and discover some astonishing facts. Find out about our new language and its status in Papua New Guinea. Our diversity in culture adds extra flames with amazing and explosive geology. Observe its astonishing wealth in natural resources, its progressive attitude to conservation, its history, religions, and political structure. Explore its provinces. If there's something you need to know about Papua New Guinea which is not on this site - I hope it would either be linked to it, or it will be coming soon.

"It is virtual Papua New Guinea, - the next best thing to being there!

You noken abrusim Papua Niu Gini - Wanpela naispela hap bai long lukim

Meri hilans i karamapim het wantaim bilas. Meri i redi long kalapkalap long haus singsing
"Women from the highlands cover their heads with decorations"

Geography: You have just entered "a world of diversity"

Papua New Guinea is referred to as a sociolinguistic tiger due to her diversity in the Pacific. The country is bordered on the north by the Bismark Sea; on the east by the Solomon Sea; on south the Coral Sea; the Gulf of Papua; and the Torres Strait; and on the west by the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya. Its other nearest neighbours are the Solomon Islands, Australia, and Vanuatu to the south, Micronesia to the east; and Malaysia; Singapore; and the Philippines to the north. Papua New Guinea is a parliamentary democracy and a member of the British Commonwealth. The country consists of the eastern half of New Guinea Island, the Bismark Archipelago, the D'Entrecasteaux Islands, the Louisiade Archipelago, and the islands of Buka and Bougainville. The country is divided into 20 provinces. The eastern half, called the mainland, accounts for more than 80 percent of the total land area of 462, 840 sq km (178,704 sq mi). Papua New Guinea has a population of 4, 394, 537 (1996, official estimate).

Languages

Papua New Guinea is famous for its wide diversity of languages. With well over 800 indigenous languages and three lingua francas (846 are still spoken and 6 have been reported dead) about one seventh of the 6000 languages spoken in the world. It is a veritable goldmine for linguists. Papua New Guinea languages are divided into two major groupings. The first is Austronesian which totals about 200 languages, and the second group is non-Austronesian or sometimes referred to as Papuan, which totals 300 or more languages. Austronesian languages are spoken in the coastal and inland regions, while the Papuan can be found in the highland interior. Most of the Papuan languages are complex in syntacticity and morphological forms spoken by very small groups of people. The main exception is Enga which has well over 200,000 speakers. Also exceptional are Enga's sister languages like Huli spoken in the Tari Basin, Koroba, and Lake Kopiago, with some 80,000 speakers and Kewa with 70,000 speakers in Kagua, Erave, and parts of the Ialibu District. I speak Kewapi (as my first language) a daughter of Kewa and sister to Huli in the Southern Highlands Province. For a long time it was thought that the Papua languages were unrelated to one another, but they have since been divided into several larger groups. Only seven languages remain isolates from the main groups.

Tok Pisin is one of the two major lingua francas of Papua New Guinea. It has at present close three million speakers and their number is still increasing, as is that of those who speak Tok Pisin as their first language. Throughout Papua New Guinea, speakers of Tok Pisin can now be encountered increasingly in areas which have otherwise been the exclusive realm of Hiri Motu (another major lingua franca of the area). The language has been gaining tremendously in importance and prestige during the last few years. It always has been, and continues to be, the major means of intercommunication amongst Papuans and New Guineans who have no other language in common. Even amongst speakers of the same local language it is frequently used for prestige reasons. It has been used for for a long time throughout Papua New Guinea for administrative purposes, but its importance has been greatly enhanced through its becoming the language of discussion in the majority of Local Government Councils and the Parliament. A knowledge of it or some other language of the country is advantage for communication purposes. Tok Pisin is a pidgin language whose vocabulary is derived from, but no means identical with, English to the extent of 75-80%, with 15-20% based on indigenous languages, but mainly an Austranesian language family called 'Kuanua' spoken by the Tolai people of East and West New Britian Provinces, and a 5% on other languages mostly German etc. Its structure is in many ways un-English and is patterned on that of of the Austronesian languages of the South-Western Pacific.

History of Tok Pisin

The historical beginning of Tok Pisin can be traced in the early 18th century, however, it does not appear fully formed until mid 1885. Its genesis was the result of a gradually stabilizing and expanding contact language which went through the following stages of development: jargon stage, to stable pidgin, expanded pidgin, followed by creolization on the notion of the pidgin/creole life cycle. The history of Tok Pisin is complex, recent research by numerous pidgin/creole linguists have shown that it would be an oversimplification of the situation to suggest that Tok Pisin represents a direct linear descendant of Pacific Jargon English which developed in several varieties in various parts of the South Pacific before the middle of the 19th century as a result of contacts between Europeans and South Sea islanders.

Suzanne Romaine and other creolists show that Pacific Jargon English came into being under the indirect linguistic influence of Chinese Pidgin English. In a similarly indirect way, gave rise to several varieties of Pidgin English, such as Samoan Plantation Pidgin English, New Caledonian Plantation Pidgin English, and Queensland Plantation Pidgin English. It appears that there has been mutual influence among these main three plantation pidgins via shared recruiting areas for plantation labour. There has been comparatively strong mutual influence between Queensland Plantation English, Solomon Islands Pidgin English, and Samoan Plantation Pidgin English, and to lesser extent and only indirectly, from Queensland Plantation Pidgin English, via Samoan Plantation Pidgin English, and indirectly from Pacific Jargon English. In any event Tok Pisin is much less closely related to Queensland Plantation English, than Solomon Islands English, and the Vanuatu Pidgin English, which is commonly called Bichelamar in the literature.

After the formal annexation of the Bismarck Archiepelago, the western part of the Solomon Islands, and the north-eastern part of the New Guinea mainland by the German Reich, labor trade between those areas and most plantation areas in the Pacific came to a halt. The only plantations which continued to recruit labor from German New Guinea were the German-owned plantations in Samoa. The result of this was that linguistic development of Pidgin English in these areas began to take place independent of other varieties of Pidgin English, and English was at the same time largely withdrawn as a model language for Pidgin English in the German-controlled area.

Transcription of Tok Pisin

Title: Mounten ipaiya (The mountain errupts/burns/lights)

Below is a song released by Panim Wok Band, a contemporary music in Papua New Guinea. The song was composed just before a volcanic eruption in 1994, which completely devastated one of the our most beautiful island township called Rabaul in East New Britian Province. (See map)

Hey yumi no save bai yumi go we
Sapos~mountain paiya bai ipairap
Hey yumi no sawe bai yumi laip yet,
Sapos~maunten paiya bai ipairap

Mi no laik lusim peles bilong mi
Mi no laik stap long narapela hap
Mi laik stap yee et long Rabaul

Mi no laik lusim peles bilong mi
Mi no laik stap long narapela hap
Mi laik stap yee et long Rabaul

(Chorus)

Mi no laik Rabaul taun bai ibagarap
Mi no laik stap long narapela hap
Mi laik stap yee et long Rabaul (2x)

(Chorus)

Mi no laik lusim peles bilong mi
Mi laik stap long narapela hap
Mi laik kam bek long Rabaul

Mi no laik Rabaul taun bai ibagarap
Mi no laik stap long narapela hap
Mi laik kam bek long Rabaul
Mi laik stap yee et long Rabaul
Mi laik stap yee et long Rabaul

Tangio long kisim liklik save long Tok Pisin "Thanks for grasping a little knowledge in Tok Pisin"

Contact address:
Papua New Guinea University of Technology,
Department of Language and Communication Studies,
Private Mail Bag,
Lae, Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea.
Tel: (675) 473 4751.
Fax: (675) 475 7415 e-mail: eetepa@unitech.ac.pg

Note:
Copy right: Papua New Guinea National News Paper (PNG emblem): http://www.wr.com.au/national

lonely planet yearly: (PNG map) http://www.lonely.com.au/dest/aust/graphics/map-png.htm

1985-1988, by Coombs Computing Unit, Research Schools of Science & Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra.

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