Tok Pisin

Tok Pisin
Pronunciation	[tok pisin]
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Native speakers	130,000 (2004–2016) L2 speakers: 4,000,000
Language family	English Creole Pacific Melanesian Pidgin Tok Pisin
Writing system	Latin script (Tok Pisin alphabet) Pidgin Braille
Official status
Official language in	Papua New Guinea
Language codes
ISO 639-2	tpi
ISO 639-3	tpi
Glottolog	tokp1240
Linguasphere	52-ABB-cc

A Tok Pisin speaker, recorded in Taiwan

Tok Pisin (English: /tɒk ˈpɪsɪn/ TOK PISS-in, /tɔːk, -zɪn/ tawk, -⁠zin; Tok Pisin [tok pisin]), often referred to by English speakers as New Guinea Pidgin or simply Pidgin, is a creole language spoken throughout Papua New Guinea. It is an official language of Papua New Guinea and the most widely used language in the country. However, in parts of the southern provinces of Western, Gulf, Central, Oro, and Milne Bay, the use of Tok Pisin has a shorter history and is less universal, especially among older people.

Between five and six million people use Tok Pisin to some degree, although 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 from Madang and a father from Rabaul). Urban families in particular, and those of police and defence 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 possibly English). Over the decades, Tok Pisin has increasingly overtaken Hiri Motu as the dominant lingua franca among town-dwellers. Perhaps one million people now use Tok Pisin as a primary language. Tok Pisin is slowly "crowding out" other languages of Papua New Guinea.

Name

A 1971 reference book on Tok Pisin (referring to the language as Melanesian Pidgin)

Hotel room door signs in Papua New Guinea

Tok originates from English talk, but has a wider application, also meaning 'word, speech, language'. Pisin derives from the English word pidgin; the latter, in turn, may originate in the word business, which is descriptive of the typical development and use of pidgins as inter-ethnic trade languages.

While Tok Pisin's name in the language is Tok Pisin, it is also called "New Guinea Pidgin" in English. Papua New Guinean anglophones often refer to Tok Pisin as "Pidgin" when speaking English. This usage of "Pidgin" differs from the term pidgin (language) as used in linguistics. Tok Pisin is not a pidgin in the latter sense, since it has become a first language for many people (rather than simply a lingua franca to facilitate communication with speakers of other languages). As such, it is considered a creole in linguistic terminology.

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 and blackbirding). 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 people of East New Britain).

This English-based pidgin evolved into Tok Pisin in German New Guinea (where the German-based creole Unserdeutsch 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. Tok Pisin and the closely related Bislama in Vanuatu and Pijin in the Solomon 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) 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 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.

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, and islands outside of New Guinea. For example, Pidgin speakers from Finschhafen speak rather quickly and often have difficulty making themselves understood elsewhere. 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.

There are 4 sociolects of Tok Pisin:

1. Tok Bus (meaning "talk of the remote areas") or Tok Kanaka (meaning "talk of the people of the remote areas")
2. Tok Bilong Asples (meaning "language of the villages") which is the traditional rural Tok Pisin
3. Tok Skul (meaning "talk of the schools") or Tok Bilong Taun (meaning "talk of the Towns") which is the urban Tok Pisin
4. Tok Masta (meaning "language of the colonizers", unsystematically simplified English with some Tok Pisin words)

Alphabet

The Tok Pisin alphabet contains 21 letters, five of which are vowels, and four digraphs. The letters are (vowels in bold):

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⟩) denote diphthongs while the fourth, ⟨ng⟩, is used for both /ŋ/ and /ŋɡ/.

Phonology

Tok Pisin has a smaller number of phonemes than its lexifier language, English. It has around 24 core phonemes: 5 vowels and around 19 consonants. However, this varies with the local substrate languages and the level of education of the speaker. 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

Consonant phonemes

		Labial	Coronal	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n		ŋ
Plosive	voiceless	p	t		k
	voiced	b	d		ɡ
Affricate				dʒ
Fricative	voiceless	f	s			h
	voiced	v
Approximant		w	l	j
Rhotic			r

• Voiced plosives are pronounced by many speakers (especially of Melanesian backgrounds) as prenasalized plosives.
• /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 the alveolar tap or flap, [ɾ]. There can be variation between /r/ and /l/.
• The labiodental fricatives /f v/ may be marginal, with contrastive use present only in heavily Anglicized varieties. The use of /f/ vs. /p/ is variable. There is also variation between /f/ and /v/ in some words, such as faif/faiv 'five'.
• Likewise, there may be marginal use of /ʃ ʒ/.

Vowels

Tok Pisin has five pure vowels:

Vowel phonemes

	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Mid	e	o
Open	a

Grammar

The verb has a suffix, -im (< Eng. 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 (< Eng. by and by) and bin (past) (< Eng. been). The present progressive tense is indicated by the word stap – e.g. Hem kaikai stap "He is eating".

The noun 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 is liklik "little". It is also found on numerals and determiners:

Tok Pisin: wanpela → Eng. "one"

Tok Pisin: tupela → Eng. "two"

Tok Pisin: dispela boi → Eng. "this bloke"

Pronouns show person, number, and clusivity. 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) < Eng. me	mitupela (he/she and I) < Eng. *me two fellow	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".

There are only two proper prepositions:

• the genitive preposition bilong (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".
• the oblique preposition long (etym. < Eng. along), which is used for various other relations (such as locative or dative): e.g. Mipela i bin go long blekmaket. "We went to the black market".

Some phrases 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 – 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 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".

Tense and aspect

Past tense: marked by bin (< Eng. been):

Tok Pisin: Na praim minista i bin tok olsem.

English: "And the prime minister spoke thus."

Continuative same tense is expressed through: verb + i stap.

Tok Pisin: Em i slip i stap.

English: "He/She is sleeping."

Completive or perfective aspect expressed through the word pinis (< Eng. finish):

Tok Pisin: Em i lusim bot pinis.

English: "He had got out of the boat."

Transitive words are expressed through -im (< Eng. him):

Tok Pisin: Yu pinisim stori nau.

English: "Finish your story now!"

Future is expressed through the word "bai" (< Eng. by and by):

Tok Pisin: Nil nabaut bai i ros.

English: "If you take just any nails that happen to be around, those will rust."

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 pidgin.
2. Pidgin 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. Edward Wolfers claimed that the syntax is from the substratum languages—the languages of the local peoples. 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:

1. A smaller vocabulary which leads to metaphors to supply lexical units:
   • Smaller vocabulary:

     vot = "election" (n) and "vote" (v)

     hevi = "heavy" (adj) and "weight" (n)

   • Metaphors:

     skru bilong han (screw of the arm) = "elbow"

     skru bilong lek (screw of the leg) = "knee" (Just skru almost always indicates the knee. In liturgical contexts, brukim skru is "kneel.")

     gras bilong het (grass of the head) = "hair" (Hall, 1966: 90f) (Most commonly just gras —see note on skru bilong lek above.)

   • Periphrases:

     nambawan pikinini bilong misis kwin (literally "first child of Mrs Queen") = King Charles III, then known through his relation to the Queen.

2. A reduced grammar: lack of copula, determiners; reduced set of prepositions, and conjunctions
3. Less differentiated phonology: [p] and [f] are not distinguished in Tok Pisin (they are in free variation). The sibilants /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/, and /dʒ/ are also not distinguished.

   All of the English words fish, peach, feast, piss, and peace would have been realised in Tok Pisin as pis. In fact, the Tok Pisin pis means "fish" (and usually has a sound closer to [ɪ], almost like the English word piss). English piss was reduplicated to keep it distinct: thus pispis means "urine" or "to urinate".

   Likewise, sip in Tok Pisin could have represented English ship, jib, jeep, sieve, sheep, or chief. In fact, it means "ship".

Vocabulary

Many words in the Tok Pisin language are derived from English (with Australian influences), indigenous Melanesian languages, and German (part of the country was under German rule until 1919). Some examples:

• as = "bottom", "cause", "beginning" (from ass/arse). As ples bilong em = "his birthplace". As bilong diwai = "the stump of a tree".
• bagarap(im) = "broken", "to break down" (from bugger 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"
• belhat = "angry" (lit. "belly hot")
• belo = "bell", as in belo 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 German Benzin)
• bilong wanem? = "why?"
• braun = "brown"
• buai = "betelnut"
• 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", "wood", "plant", "stick", etc.
• gat bel = "pregnant" (lit. "has belly"; pasin bilong givim bel = "fertility")
• gras = "hair" (from grass)
• gude = "hello" (from g'day)
• gut = "good"
• (h)amamas = "happy"
• hap = a piece of, as in hap diwai = a piece of wood (from half)
  • hapsait = "the other side" (from half side)
  • hap ret = "purple" (from half red)
• haus = "house" or "building" (from German Haus and/or English house)
  • hausboi/hausmeri = "a male/female domestic servant"; haus boi can also mean "servants quarters"
  • haus kaikai = restaurant ("house [of] food")
  • haus moni = "bank" ("house [of] money")
  • haus sik = "hospital" ("house [of] sick")
  • haus dok sik = "animal hospital" ("house [of] dog sick")
  • haus karai = "place of mourning" ("house [of] cry")
  • sit haus (vulgar) = "toilet" ("shit house"), also:
    • liklik haus = "toilet"
    • smol haus = "toilet/bathroom" ("small house")
  • haus tambaran = "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 = "catch fish" (from hook)
• kaikai = "food", "eat", "to bite" (Austronesian loan word)
  • kaikai bilong moningtaim = "breakfast"
  • kaikai bilong nait = "dinner/supper"
• kakaruk = "chicken" (probably onomatapoetic, from the crowing of the rooster)
• kamap = "arrive", "become" (from come up)
• kisim = "get", "take" (from get them)
• lotu = "church", "worship" from Fijian, but sometimes sios 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 usage monkey, applied to mischievous children, although a derivation from the German Männchen, meaning "little man", has also been suggested)
• manmeri = "people" (from man "man" and meri "woman")
• maski = "it doesn't matter", "don't worry about it" (probably from German macht nichts = "it doesn't matter")
• maus gras = "moustache" ("mouth grass")
• meri = "woman" (from the English name Mary); also "female", e.g., bulmakau meri (lit. "bull-cow female") = cow.
• olgeta = "all" (from all together)
• olsem wanem = "what?", "what's going on?" (literally "like what"?); sometimes used as an informal greeting, similar to what's up? in English
• palopa - homosexual man, or transsexual woman
• pisin = "bird" (from pigeon). (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 as wan weng, literally "bird language".)
• pasim = "close", "lock" (from fasten)
  • pasim maus = "shut up", "be quiet", i.e. yu pasim maus, literally "you close mouth" = "shut up!"
• paul = "wrong", "confused", i.e. em i paul = "he is confused" (from English foul)
• pikinini = "child", ultimately from Portuguese-influenced Lingua franca; cf. English pickaninny
• raskol = "thief, criminal" (from rascal)
• raus, rausim (rausim is the transitive form) = "get out, throw out, remove" (from German raus meaning "out")
• rokrok = "frog" (probably onomatopoeic)
• sapos = "if" (from suppose)
• save = "know", "to do habitually" (ultimately from Portuguese-influenced Lingua franca, cf. English savvy)
• sit = "remnant" (from shit)
• solwara = "ocean" (from salt water)
• sop = "soap"; also
  • sop bilong tut = "toothpaste"
  • sop bilong gras = "shampoo"
• stap = "stay", "be (somewhere)", "live" (from stop)
• susa = "sister", though nowadays very commonly supplanted by sista. Some Tok Pisin speakers use susa for a sibling of the opposite gender, while a sibling of the same gender as the speaker is a b(a)rata.
• susu = "milk, breasts" (from Malay susu)
• 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 (from tabu or tambu in various Austronesian languages, the origin of Eng. taboo)
• tasol = "only, just"; "but" (from that's all)
• Tok Inglis = "English language"
• wanpela = "one", "a" (indefinite article).

Example text

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Tok Pisin:

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.

Article 1 of the Universal 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.

References

• Dutton, Thomas Edward; Thomas, Dicks (1985). A New Course in Tok Pisin (New Guinea Pidgin). Canberra: Australian National University. ISBN 978-0-85883-341-8. OCLC 15812820.
• Mihalic, Francis (1971). The Jacaranda Dictionary and Grammar of Melanesian Pidgin. Milton, Queensland: Jacaranda Press. ISBN 978-0-7016-8112-8. OCLC 213236.
• 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. ISBN 978-90-272-4718-6.
• 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. ISBN 978-90-272-3023-2.
• Murphy, John Joseph (1985). The Book of Pidgin English (6th ed.). Bathurst, New South Wales: Robert Brown. ISBN 978-0-404-14160-8. OCLC 5354671.
• Nupela Testamen bilong Bikpela Jisas Kraist (in Tok Pisin). The Bible Society of Papua New Guinea. 1980. ISBN 978-0-647-03671-6. OCLC 12329661.
• Romaine, Suzanne (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.
• Smith, Geoff P. (2002). Growing Up With Tok Pisin: Contact, Creolization, and Change in Papua New Guinea's National Language. London: Battlebridge Publications. ISBN 978-1-903292-06-8. OCLC 49834526.
• Smith, Geoff P. (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. ISBN 978-3-11-019637-5.
• Verhaar, John W.M. (1995). Toward a Reference Grammar of Tok Pisin: An Experiment in Corpus Linguistics. Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications, no. 26. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. ISBN 9780824816728. JSTOR 20006762.
• Volker, C.A. (2008). Papua New Guinea Tok Pisin English Dictionary. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-555112-9.
• Wolfers, Edward (1971). "A report on Neo-Melanesian". In Dell 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. ISBN 9780521078337.
• 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. ISBN 978-0-85883-321-0. OCLC 12883165.

Further reading

• Throwim Way Leg by Tim Flannery

External links

• Tok Pisin Translation, Resources, and Discussion Offers Tok Pisin translator, vocabulary, and discussion groups.
• Tok Pisin (New Guinea Pidgin) English Bilingual Dictionary
• Tok Pisin phrasebook on Wikivoyage
• A bibliography of Tok Pisin dictionaries, phrase books and study guides
• Revising the Mihalic Project Archived 2016-09-05 at the Wayback Machine, 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
• Radio Australia Tok Pisin service
• Tok Pisin Radio on Youtube
• Buk Baibel long Tok Pisin (The Bible in Tok Pisin)
• Eukarist Anglican liturgy of Holy Communion in Tok Pisin
• Tokpisin Grammar Workbook for English Speakers. A Practical Approach to Learning the Sentence Structure of Melanesian Pidgin (or Tokpisin).
• Robert Eklund's Tok Pisin Page – with recorded dialogs, children's ditties and a hymn (alternative address)
• Tok Pisin Swadesh List by Rosetta Project
• Audio and video recordings of a Tok Pisin event. Traditional "house cry"/"kisim sori na kam" ceremony for big man Paul Ine. Archived with Kaipuleohone