Bridging Seven Hundred Solitudes: Tok Pisin

At over 700 languages, Papua New Guinea (PNG) is the most linguistically diverse nation on earth. Given that its average language community counts less than 5,000 speakers, and Enga, its largest tradition, only claims about 200,000, PNG nationhood faces some significant communication challenges. As a former colony, it has exercised the option of falling back on a colonial tongue. But Papuans have chosen to remake that language in their own image, in effect colonising the language of their colonisers, with fascinating results.

When Papua New Guinea became independent in 1975, its founders recognised three "national" or business languages. While government is largely conducted in Australian English, two creoles compete for the status of national auxiliary. Hiri Motu, a simplified version of an indigenous tradition, was originally a British colonial law enforcement tool. (Hence its original name, Police Motu.) However, though Hiri Motu continues to enjoy regional popularly, Papuans are increasingly pushing Tok Pisin, a language based on an English pidgin, into the national role. Today something like 50% of Papuans speak Tok Pisin as a second language, and the number is growing. In fact, as members of disparate language communities intermarry and raise children, first-language Tok Pisin speakers are multiplying. Parliament frequently debates in Tok Pisin, and many Papuan elementary schools teach in it.

Tok Pisin originated in the late 19th century among Papuan labourers who were kidnapped by English plantation owners and forced into indentured servitude in Samoa. Necessity gave birth to a pidgin based on English, but incorporating words and syntax from Papuan languages, Samoan, German (Germany being another colonial power in New Guinea), and Portuguese. As a pidgin, it had a very limited range of expression. However, when returning Papuans brought their pidgin home with them, it began to expand beyond a simple master-servant jargon. By the 1960s, anthropologists recognised it as a proto-language called Neomelanesian. (Wantok, PNG's niuspepa bilong ol grassroots, hit Port Moresby newsstands late in this period.) Subsequent Papuan nationhood continued the work of language-building, and today most linguists agree that Tok Pisin is a full-fledged language.

A few holdouts still insist that Tok Pisin is "baby talk," but Father Francis Mihalic, Roman priest and one of the most widely-recognised and -published Tok Pisin scholars, points out that French, Italian, Rumanian, and sibling traditions were excoriated as "dog Latin" for generations before their legitimacy was universally recognised. Tok Pisin is making a similar journey.

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