Bridging Seven Hundred Solitudes: Tok Pisin - Page 2
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A uniquely Melanesian tradition
Modern Tok Pisin blends fairly straightforward grammar inherited from its field-pidgin beginnings with syntactical wrinkles developed to answer ensuing needs. Today, in addition to "normal" Tok Pisin, speakers may summon secretive (tok bokis) and metaphorical (tok piksa) sub-vocabularies. Cultural needs have also hammered the English base vocabulary into some interesting shapes. For example, where English has only one second-person pronoun (you), Tok Pisin has four: yu (you), yutupela (you two), yutripela (you three) and yupela (you all). The morphemes are English; you, you two fellows, etc. But they have been bent to uniquely Melanesian purposes, an intriguing case of culture determining language.
A limited sound set means that a single Tok Pisin word can have many meanings. The word hat, for instance, can mean hat, hot, heart, or hard, depending on context. Like fellow pidgin Chinook Jargon, Tok Pisin historically relied on sign language or vocal stress to fill in the blanks, but as it evolves into a literary language, it is developing grammatical responses to the challenge.
Given its Papuan location, Tok Pisin was fated to attract scholarship. Much of it, such as the Institut für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, is German-sponsored. Robert Eklund and Thomas H. Slone both maintain exhaustive lists of Tok Pisin studies. Slone and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights also offer complete Tok Pisin texts. An online Tok Pisin dictionary and children's book round out the surf.
Nor are social scientists the only people eager to mine PNG's human wealth. As one of the last places on earth as yet unexploited by organised religion, New Guinea is the focus of concentrated missionary activity. Several Tok Pisin Bible-based sites bear witness to their attentions; the Buddhists also seem to have hit the PNG beach, if their online Tok Pisin suttas are indicative.
For spoken Tok Pisin examples, try Wycliffe's spoken Bible passages or Radio Australia's on-demand stories in Tok Pisin. ABC's PNG service also broadcasts Tok Pisin programming on shortwave and via livestream.
Laboratory for the future
New Guinea is diversity personified, and a poster child for the folly of profit-centred values. With just 1% of the world's land surface, this island harbours both vast human diversity and fully 5% of the planet's plant and animal species. New Guinea, so long a touchstone of social science, seems an excellent place to search for a better way to manage humanity's affairs.
