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Tok Pisin (tok means "word" or "speech", pisin means "business") is the creole spoken in Papua New Guinea (PNG). It is one of the official languages of PNG and the most widely used language in that country, spoken by about 2 million people as a second language. Tok Pisin was also called Melanesian Pidgin English or Neo-Melanesian.Tok Pisin is used to some extent in the media and for government issues, though English is still preferred in these contexts. In some schools Tok Pisin is the language of instruction in the first three years of elementary education.
Its vocabulary is about 5/6 Indo-European and 1/6 Austronesian languages; its grammar is built on a simple pidgin grammar, with various irregularities.
The verb has one suffix, -im 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). The progressive tense is indicated by the word stap - eating is kaikai stap.
The noun does not indicate number, though pronouns do.
Adjectives usually take the suffix -pela 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 exclusion:
| 1st excl. | 1st incl. | 2nd | 3rd |
|---|
| Singular | mi (I) | - | yu (you) | em (he /she) |
|---|
| Dual | mitupela (I and him / her) | yumitupela (you and mi) | yutupela (you two) | tupela (they two) |
|---|
| Plural | mipela (I and they) | yumi (you all and me) | yupela (you all) | ol (they) |
|---|
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, 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".
1 Vocabulary
Tok Pisin can sound very colourful in its use of words, which are derived from English (with Australian influences), indigenous MelanesiaMelanesia (from Greek "black islands") is a region extending from the west Pacific to the Arafura Sea, north and north-east of Australia. The term was first used by Jules Dumont d'Urville in 1832 to denote an ethnic and geographical grouping of islands din languages and GermanGerman (called Deutsch in German in which germanisch refers to prechristian times), is a member of the western group of Germanic languages and one of the world's major languages. It is the language with the most native speakers in the European Union. (part of the country was under German rule until 1919Events January January 1 Edsel Ford succeeds his father as head of the Ford Motor Company January 5 Spartacist uprising Socialist demonstrations in Berlin turn into attempted communist revolution with Spartacist League in the forefront January 9 Spartacus). However, Tok Pisin is often ridiculed as 'baby talk' or 'broken English'. For example, the word for 'moustache' is mausgras - literally 'mouth grass'.
- bagarap - break down (literally bugger up)- very widely used in PNG
- balus - aeroplane (literally pigeon)
- haus tambaran - traditional house, house with artifacts of ancestors or for honoring ancestors; tambaran means "ancestor spirit" or "ghost"
- kamap - arrive, become
- meri - woman
- pikinini - child (from Pacific Pidgin English , but ultimately from PortuguesePortuguese portugues is a Romance language predominantly spoken in Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and East Timor. With more than 200 million native speakers, Portuguese is one of the few languages spoken in such widely-distributed parts influenced Lingua Franca)
- raus - get out (from German)
- sapos - if (from English suppose)
- save - know (from Pacific Pidgin English , but ultimately from PortuguesePortuguese portugues is a Romance language predominantly spoken in Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and East Timor. With more than 200 million native speakers, Portuguese is one of the few languages spoken in such widely-distributed parts influenced Lingua Franca)
The official Tok Pisin language Wikipedia can be found at http://tpi.wikipedia.org/
