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Tok Pisin



 
 
Tok Pisin (; tok is derived from English "talk" but like many such words has a wider application, also meaning "word" or "speech" and even "language" - pisin is derived from English "pidgin
Pidgin

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....
" and for its speakers is simply the name of the language) is a creole
Creole language

A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativization pidgin. This understanding of creole genesis culminated in Robert A....
 spoken throughout Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands ....
; in parts of Western, Gulf, Central, Oro and Milne Bay Provinces the use of Tok Pisin has a shorter history, and is less universal, especially among older people.






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Tok Pisin (; tok is derived from English "talk" but like many such words has a wider application, also meaning "word" or "speech" and even "language" - pisin is derived from English "pidgin
Pidgin

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....
" and for its speakers is simply the name of the language) is a creole
Creole language

A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativization pidgin. This understanding of creole genesis culminated in Robert A....
 spoken throughout Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands ....
; in parts of Western, Gulf, Central, Oro and Milne Bay Provinces the use of Tok Pisin has a shorter history, and is less universal, especially among older people. 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, although by no means all of these speak it well. Between 1 and 2 million are exposed to it as a first language, in particular the children of parents or grandparents originally speaking different vernaculars (say, a mother from Madang and a father from Rabaul). Urban families in particular, and those of police and defence force members, often communicate between themselves in Tok Pisin, either never gaining fluency in a vernacular ("tok ples"), or learning it as a second (or third) language, after Tok Pisin (and possibly English). Perhaps 1 million people now 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 anglophone
Anglophone

An Anglophone is someone who speaks the English language. As an adjective, it refers to belonging to an English-speaking population especially in a country where two or more languages are spoken....
s almost invariably refer to Tok Pisin as Pidgin when speaking English (and note that the published court reports of Papua New Guinea refer to it as "Pidgin": 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. However, Tok Pisin is favoured by many professional linguists to avoid spreading the misconception that Tok Pisin is still a pidgin
Pidgin

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....
 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
Lingua franca

A lingua franca is a language systematically used to communicate between persons not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both persons' mother tongues....
 to facilitate communication with speakers of other languages.

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
South Sea Islander

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 and Vanuatu in Melanesia and the Loyalty Islands, Samoa, Kiribati and Tuvalu in Polynesia and Micronesia who were recruited between the mid to late 19th century as labour...
 and Blackbirding
Blackbirding

Blackbirding refers to the recruitment of people through trickery and kidnappings to work on plantations, particularly the sugar cane plantations of Queensland and Fiji....
). The labourers began to develop a pidgin, drawing vocabulary primarily from English, but also from German, Malay, Portuguese and their own Austronesian languages (perhaps especially Kuanua, that of the Tolai
Tolai

The Tolai are the indigenous people of the Gazelle Peninsula and the Duke of York Islands of East New Britain in the Islands Region of Papua New Guinea....
 people of East New Britain
East New Britain

East New Britain is a province of Papua New Guinea, on the island of New Britain. The capital of the province is Kokopo, not far from the old capital of Rabaul, which was largely destroyed in a 1994 volcanic eruption....
). This English-based pidgin evolved into Tok Pisin in German New Guinea
German New Guinea

German New Guinea was a former Germany protectorate from 1884 to 1914, consisting of the northeastern part of New Guinea and several nearby island groups....
 (where the German-based creole Unserdeutsch
Unserdeutsch language

Unserdeutsch , or Rabaul Creole German, is a German-based creole language spoken primarily in Papua New Guinea and the northeast of Australia....
 was also spoken). It became a widely used 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. The flourishing of the mainly English-based Tok Pisin in German New Guinea (despite the language of the metropolitan power being German) is to be contrasted with Hiri Motu, the lingua franca of Papua, which was derived not from English but from Motu
Motu language

Motu is one of many Central Papuan languages spoken by the Motuans, native inhabitants of Papua New Guinea. It is still common today in the region, particularly around the capital, Port Moresby....
, the vernacular of the indigenous people of the Port Moresby
Port Moresby

||-||-||-||-||-||}Port Moresby , or Pot Mosbi in Tok Pisin, population 255,000 , is the Capital and largest city of Papua New Guinea ....
 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
National Parliament of Papua New Guinea

The National Parliament of Papua New Guinea is the unicameral parliament national legislature in Papua New Guinea. It was first created in 1964 as the House of Assembly of Papua and New Guinea, but gained its current name with the granting of independence in 1975....
. 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
Solomon Islands

For the group of islands rather than the nation, see 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. It has 16 consonants and 5 vowels. However, this varies with the local substrate
Substratum

In linguistics, a stratum or strate refers to a language that influences, or is influenced by another through language contact. A substratum is a language which is influenced by another, while a superstratum is the language that exerts the influence....
 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
Labial consonant

Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips or with the lower lip and the upper teeth . English is a bilabial nasal consonant sonorant, and are bilabial stop consonant , and are labiodental fricative consonant....
Coronal
Coronal consonant

Coronal consonants are articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. Only the coronal consonants can be divided into apical consonant , laminal consonant , domed consonant , or sub-apical consonant , as well as a few rarer orientations, because only the front of the tongue has such dexterity....
PalatalVelar
Velar consonant

Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the Soft palate)....
Glottal
Glottal consonant

Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricatives, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider them to be consonants at all....
Plosive  
Fricative  
Nasal
Nasal consonant

A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered soft palate in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue....
  
Lateral
Lateral consonant

Laterals are "L"-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue....
    
Approximant
Approximant consonant

Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and "typical" consonants. In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without much audible turbulence....
   
Rhotic consonant
Rhotic consonant

Rhotic consonants, or "R"-like sounds, are non-lateral liquid consonants. This class of sounds is difficult to characterise phonetically, though most of them share some acoustic peculiarities, most notably a lowered third formant in their sound spectrum....
    


  • 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
Spanish language

Spanish or Castilian is a Romance languages that originated in northern Spain, and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile and evolved into the principal language of government and trade....
, Japanese
Japanese language

IPA: [n?iho?go] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages....
, and many other five-vowel languages:
Front
Front vowel

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 as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
Central
Central vowel

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 front vowel and a back vowel....
Back
Back vowel

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 possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
Close
Close vowel

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 possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
 
Mid
Mid vowel

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 open vowel and a close vowel....
 
Open
Open vowel

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 possible from the roof of the mouth....
 


Grammar


The verb
Verb

In syntax, a verb is a word that usually denotes an action , an occurrence , or a state of being . Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood and grammatical voice....
 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) (from "by and by") 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
Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open class lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition....
 does not indicate number, though pronouns do.

Adjective
Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntax role is to grammatical modifier a noun or pronoun, giving more information about the noun or pronoun's definition....
s usually take the suffix -pela (from "fellow") when modifying nouns; an exception is liklik "little". Liklik can also be used as an adverb
Adverb

An adverb is a part of speech. It is any word that modifies any other part of language: verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentence s and other adverbs, except for nouns; modifiers of nouns are primarily determiners and adjectives....
 meaning "slightly", as in dispela bikpela liklik ston, "this slightly big stone". The suffix -pela in some places, such as Port Moresby, is sometimes pronounced -pla. Numbers often take the suffix also, e.g. wanpela or tupela for one and two.

Pronoun
Pronoun

In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun with or without a Determiner , such as Wiktionary:you and Wiktionary:they in English language....
s show person
Grammatical person

Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deixis reference to a participant in an event, such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns....
, number
Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
, and clusivity
Clusivity

In linguistics, clusivity is a distinction between inclusive and exclusive Grammatical person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called inclusive "we" and exclusive "we"....
. 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
Reduplication

Reduplication, in linguistics, is a morphology process by which the root or Stem of a word, or part of it, is repeated.Reduplication is used in inflections to convey a grammatical function, such as plurality, intensification, etc., and in lexical Derivation to create new words....
 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. (Note that longlong (i.e. long reduplicated) means 'crazy'). Some phrase
Phrase

In grammar, a phrase is a group of words that functions as a single unit in the syntax of a Sentence .For example the house at the end of the street is a phrase....
s are used as prepositions, such as long namel (bilong), "in the middle of".

Several of these features derive from the common grammatical norms of Austronesian languages
Austronesian languages

The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Maritime Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia....
 - although usually in a simplified form. Other features, such as word order, are however closer to English.

Sentences which have a 3rd person subject often put the word i just before the verb. This may or may not be written separate from the verb, occasionally written as a prefix. It was once thought to be an abbreviation for "he", but now is thought to be a grammatical construction instead. E.g. "Kar i tambu long hia" is "car forbidden here", i.e. "no parking".

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 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 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
Derek Bickerton

Derek Bickerton is a linguistics and Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Based on his work in creole languages in Guyana and Hawaii, he has proposed that the features of creole languages provide powerful insights into the Origins of language of language both by individuals and as a feature of the human species....
'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:

  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
      Elbow

      The elbow is the region surrounding the elbow-joint—the ginglymus or hinge joint in the middle of the arm. Three bones form the elbow joint: the humerus of the upper arm, and the paired radius and ulna of the forearm....
      " (This is almost always just "skru" - hardly ever distinguished as "skru bilong han").
      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
    Copula

    In linguistics, a copula is a word used to link the subject of a sentence with a predicate . Although it might not itself express an action or condition, it serves to equate the subject with the predicate....
    , prepositions, determiners and conjunctions
    Grammatical conjunction

    In grammar, a conjunction is a part of speech that connects two words, phrases or clauses together. This definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech, so what constitutes a "conjunction" should be defined for each language....
  3. Less differentiated phonology: and are not distinguished in Tok Pisin (they are in free variation). The sibilants
    Sibilant consonant

    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 the sharp edge of the teeth....
     , , , , , 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 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
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 (with Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
n influences), indigenous Melanesia
Melanesia

Melanesia literally means "islands of the black-skinned people". It is a subregion of Oceania extending from the western side of the West Pacific to the Arafura Sea, north and northeast of Australia....
n languages and German
German language

German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
 (part of the country was under German rule until 1914).

  • as - bottom, cause (from "ass"/"arse")
  • bagarap(im) - broken, to break down (from "bugger up") - very widely used in Papua New Guinea
  • bagarap olgeta - completely broken
  • balus - airplane or bird (from a Melanesian word for "bird")
  • belhat - angry (lit. "belly hot")
  • belo - lunch (from the bellow of horns used by businesses to indicate the lunch hour has begun)
  • bilong wanem? - why?
  • bubu - grandparent, any elderly relation - also grandchild. Possibly from Hiri Motu - where it is a familiar form of tubu, as in tubuna or tubugu.
  • diwai - tree, plant, etc.
  • gat bel - pregnant (lit. "has belly"; pasin bilong givim bel = fertility)
  • hamamas / amamas - happy
  • haus - house
    • haus meri - female domestic servant
    • haus moni - bank
    • haus sik - hospital
    • haus dok sik - animal doctor (from "house dog sick")
    • haus karai - place of mourning
    • sit haus (rarely used) - toilet, also:
    • liklik haus - toilet
    • haus tambaran
      Haus Tambaran

      Haus Tambaran is a Tok Pisin phrase which describes a type of traditional ancestral worship house in the East Sepik region of Papua New Guinea. The most visually recognizable forms are from the Maprik area, with a tall and elaborately decorated front entrance wall where the ridge pole slopes down low toward the back of the building and the ro...
       - traditional Sepik-region house with artifacts of ancestors or for honoring ancestors; tambaran means "ancestor spirit" or "ghost"
  • hevi - heavy, problem. "Em i gat bigpela hevi" = "he has a big problem".
  • hukim pis - to catch fish (from "hook")
  • kaikai - food, eat (a Polynesian loan)
  • kakaruk - chicken (probably onamatapoetic, from the crowing of the rooster)
  • kamap - arrive, become (from "come up")
  • kisim - get, take (from "catch them")
  • lotu - church, from Fijian, but sometimes sios is used for "church"
  • manki - young man, formerly child (from German "Männekin" = "small man" in colonial era - not, as commonly believed, from "monkey")
  • maski - it doesn't matter, don't worry about it (from German "macht nichts" = "it doesn't matter")
  • manmeri - people
  • maus gras - moustache (lit: mouth grass).
  • meri - woman (from the English name "Mary"). Also means female, e.g. "Bulmakau meri" (lit. "bull cow female") = cow.
  • olgeta - all (from "all together")
  • olsem wanem - how?
  • pikinini - child (from Pacific Pidgin English, but ultimately from Portuguese
    Portuguese language

    Portuguese is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and Portugal. It is derived from the Latin language spoken by the Romanization Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula around 2000 years ago....
     influenced Lingua franca
    Lingua franca

    A lingua franca is a language systematically used to communicate between persons not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both persons' mother tongues....
    , cf. pickaninny
    Pickaninny

    Pickaninny is a term – generally considered derogatory – that in English language usage refers to black children, or a caricature of them which is widely considered racism....
    )
  • pasim - close, lock (from "fasten")
    • pasim maus - shut up, be quiet, i.e. "yu pasim maus" lit: "you close mouth" = "shut up!"
  • rausim - get out, throw out (from German "raus")
  • rokrok - frog (probably onomatopoetic)
  • sapos - if (from "suppose")
  • save - know, to do habitually (from Pacific Pidgin English, but ultimately from Portuguese
    Portuguese language

    Portuguese is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and Portugal. It is derived from the Latin language spoken by the Romanization Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula around 2000 years ago....
     influenced Lingua franca
    Lingua franca

    A lingua franca is a language systematically used to communicate between persons not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both persons' mother tongues....
    , cf. "savvy")
  • sit - remnant (from "shit")
  • solwara - ocean (from "salt water")
  • stap - be, live (temporarily, similar to Spanish "estar")
  • susa - sister, though nowadays almost universally supplanted by "sista"
  • susu - milk, breasts, from Malay
  • tambu - forbidden, from "taboo", but also means "in-laws" (mother-in-law, brother-in-law, etc.)
  • tasol - but, only (from "that's all")


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


See also

  • Tok Pisin alphabet
    Tok Pisin alphabet

    The Tok Pisin language alphabet contains 22 Letter and 2 Digraph s, five of which are vowels. The letters are :Tok Pisin has two digraphs, called:...


External links

  • Offers Tok Pisin translator, vocabulary, and discussion groups.
  • Tok Pisin phrasebook on Wikitravel
  • , 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.
  • , by Jeff Siegel
  • as spoken in Port Moresby
    Port Moresby

    ||-||-||-||-||-||}Port Moresby , or Pot Mosbi in Tok Pisin, population 255,000 , is the Capital and largest city of Papua New Guinea ....
     compiled by Terry D. Barhost and Sylvia O'Dell-Barhost.