Tok Pisin

Tok-pisin arose as a result of contacts of multilingual people from various Pacific islands during work on plantations in Queensland and in other territories. In the process of their communication, a pidgin began to form, based primarily in English (see Black English ) . The vocabulary of this pidgin also incorporated elements of the German and Portuguese languages , as well as various Austronesian languages , which were plantation workers. Further evolution, which turned this English-based pidgin into talk pisin, took place in German New Guinea (which also used the Creole language on a German basis, known as “underservice” ). Here, Tok-Pisin became the language in which workers communicated with German-speaking representatives of the upper class, as well as among themselves.

Tok-pisin is used in the media and as an official language of government bodies, but less widely than English . Tok-pisin is also the language of instruction at the elementary education stage.

The vocabulary and grammar of talk-writing is noticeably different in different parts of Papua New Guinea. The dialects of the New Guinean Highlands, the northern coast of Papua New Guinea (the Finschafen dialect is characterized by a significantly higher pace of speech, making it difficult for other native speakers to understand it) and the New Guinean Islands are clearly distinguished. The form of the language that is common in Bougainville and Beech, although to some extent differs from the dialects of New Ireland and Eastern New Britain , is nearer to them than the pidgin common in other Solomon Islands .

Tok-pisin, like many other Creole languages ​​and pidgin, has a much simpler phonology than a superstratum language . The phonological system of talk-writing consists of 16 consonants and 5 vowels (in most dialects of the English language, there are about 25 consonants and 15 vowels). However, the phonemic composition of talk-writing differs depending on the local substrate language and the speaker’s level of education: more educated native speakers and / or speakers with a larger number of phonemes in the substrate language can use up to 10 different vowels.

Consonants

The vocabulary of Tok-Pisin is 5/6 Indo-European and 1/6 Austronesian .

Grammar is greatly simplified, but closer to the Austronesian.

The verb has only one suffix - - im , showing transitivity ( luk “watch”; lukim “see”). Some verbs, for example, kaikai ("eat, eat") can be transitive without it.

Time in talk-writing is indicated by the following words: bai (future), bin (past), stap (present long).

The noun has no category of number ^[1] .

Adjectives can be formed from nouns by adding the suffix - pela .

Pronouns have categories of person, number and inclusiveness:

• Alekseev F. G. Tok-pisin: great books will still be written // Knowledge is power. - 2010. - No. 11 . - S. 111-116 .
• Dyachkov M.V., Leont'ev A.A., Torsueva E.I. Language of talk-writings (Neomelanesian). - M. , 1981.
• Wurm SA, Mühlhäusler P. (eds.). Handbook of Tok Pisin. - Canberra, 1985.

• Jan Wohlgemuth. Grammatical categories and their realizations in Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea (English) (July 7, 2001).