LANGUAGE

How is Bislama related to Tok Pisin?

In these monthly discussions we answer one question about language in PNG and beyond. This month we are looking at Bislama, the national language of Vanuatu.

ANYONE who has visited Vanuatu, spoken with ni-Vanuatu visitors to PNG, or listened to interviews on the Radio Australia Tok Pisin Service will know how easy it is for Tok Pisin and Bislama speakers to communicate with each other.
Although they are listed in many places as different languages, Tok Pisin and Bislama are really different varieties of the same language. This is understandable, since both developed from the same beginnings in the late 1800s, as people from island Melanesia speaking many different languages were blackbirded and sent to work on ships and plantations in Queensland, Samoa, and on the islands themselves.
These Melanesians used the English words they heard in their new environments and put them together according to the rules of their native Austronesian languages. When they returned to their home islands, this early version of Melanesian Pidgin English spread and became a common language in the new colonies the Europeans were establishing.
In each colony the language changed under the influence of different local languages and colonial languages.

In PNG, the new pidgin was first established around Rabaul on the Gazelle Peninsula region under a German colonial government, so there many words were taken from German and Kuanua. In today’s Vanuatu, then called the New Hebrides, there was a joint English and French administration, so there the language added English and French, rather than German, words.
In Vanuatu the first Europeans had come looking for beche-de-mer (sea cucumbers) to dry and take to China to sell. Local people pronounced this as “Bislama”, which came to be used as the name of the pidgin language the traders and local people used to communicate with each other in.
Under the joint colonial administration, some ni-Vanuatu studied at French schools, while others studied at English schools. At independence in 1980, the country was saddled with this dual school system and with the use of both French and English in government offices and the media.
While these were both retained as “working languages”, the new national constitution made Bislama the “national language” and a symbol of national unity. Because most ni-Vanuatu speak Bislama, but few are fluent in both English and French, Bislama has a higher profile in formal situations than Tok Pisin does in Papua New Guinea.
The national slogan “Long God yumi stanap”, for example, is written in Bislama on the nation’s coins and banknotes, and government offices normally have their name in Bislama.
Translations of the Bible have been made into both Tok Pisin and Bislama, and these are used as the standard ways of spelling the two varieties. Because of PNG’s colonial history as a German and then Australian colony and the long influence of German missionaries, the spelling of Tok Pisin is based on the way vowels are written in German and consonants are written in English.
With Vanuatu’s French and British colonial history, Bislama spelling is based to some extent on French spelling rules. This means that even though the spoken forms of the two varieties are very similar, when they are written, they look somewhat different.

While Tok Pisin and Bislama speakers can understand each other easily, there are some differences in vocabulary. Bislama speakers will not easily understand words of Kuanua or German origin, such as “malolo” or “rausim”, while Papua New Guineans will not know Bislama words of French origin, such as “lafet” (“party”) or bonane (“happy new year”). But these words of non-English origin are relatively few.
Sometimes Tok Pisin and Bislama words have a common origin, but each has developed the words in a different way. I was reminded of this when I was at a dinner in Vanuatu and made everyone laugh when I asked someone at the other end of the table, “Kisim sol i kam.”
In Bislama, “kisim” means “givim kis”. I was told that Vanuatu men like to kiss women, not salt shakers! For “pass” or “hand down” they say “kasem”.
Both Tok Pisin “kisim” and Bislama “kasem” have their origin in English “catch-im”, but each has changed the pronunciation in different ways.
There are also small differences in the grammar constructions of the two varieties. Perhaps the most noticeable for PNG people is the use of fo (from English “for”) instead of “long” to mean “in order to” (for example, Bislama “Mi kam fo kasem mane blong mi” and Tok Pisin “Mi kam long kisim mani bilong mi”). There is some evidence that “fo” was used by some people in the New Guinea Islands in the early 20th century, but it is no longer used there today.
In spite of these small differences, Papua New Guineans and ni-Vanuatu people can communicate easily when both are using their own varieties. Just as Melanesian Pidgin English developed as a way for Melanesians from different islands to communicate with each other, Tok Pisin and Bislama continue to unite Melanesians across national borders, even if they do not speak the same colonial language.

• Professor Volker is a linguist living in New Ireland and an Adjunct Professor in The Cairns Institute, James Cook University in Australia. He welcomes your language questions for this monthly discussion at http://[email protected]. Or continue the discussion on the Facebook Language Toktok page.

Aussie citizen returns to roots

Born Australian – to a Chimbu father and Western Highlands mother – 12-year-old Ann Marie is initiated by her dad’s Port Moresby-based relatives to signify a coming of age

By PAUL MAIMA
ANN MARIE LUURNPA is of a mixed parentage of Chimbu and Western Highlands.
She attends Bentley Park College in Cairns and will be turning 13 in December this year and lives with her parents in Cairns, Australia.
Ann Marie was born and raised as an Australian citizen but her attachment to her genealogy and tradition back in Papua New Guinea is something her dad Robert Ninkama and mum Louise would desire she learned too.
Her parents brought her back to Port Moresby during her college break last week with her small sister Skylar Mirriparri.
She was given a traditional Chimbu initiation ceremony hosted by her paternal relatives in Morata 1 in Port Moresby.The event is known as ‘giala painga’ in the Golin tribe dialect in Gumine. At this stage a young girl transitions from childhood to puberty through the experience of the first period is treated as a secretive tradition that requires a girl to go through a ceremonial cleansing organised particularly by her tribe’s mothers.
The girl is allowed to stay in the house for days. From there she is taught the lessons, advice of moral ethical, behaviour and the values to be a good wife and citizen in the future.
Then she is dressed in traditional attire and brought out and presented with bilum, crop seeds and tools signifying her journey into adult and womanhood. Ann Marie was initiated into that noble culture of Chimbu last weekend.
In seeing the importance of this PNG tradition which would not be possible to be engaged in Australia, her parents Robert and Louise  hosted the event with immediate family members in Port Moresby.
Ninkama said this tradition is very significant in the Chimbu culture and it is vital their daughter learn and appreciate it.
“Most of our cultures have died out due to adopting new influence but it’s great we still keep some of it and I am very happy my daughter has come back to PNG and has been taken through this process of her transition from childhood to adolescent then to be a woman in the future.
“I want to thank my wife Louise for giving me two daughters and I wish to thank you all family members from Mt Hagen and Chimbu who have supported us to host this programme.
“I am sure my daughter Ann Marie will treasure her culture as she grows up and be educated in Australia in the future.”
Ann Marie went through the tradition procedures on Friday night. With traditional singing till dawn.
On Saturday she was dressed in traditional attire with her small sister and presented with a pen and a book to accelerate in her education.
Other young girls and mothers then welcomed her into womanhood with chants of jubilation and songs and gifts of traditional hand woven bags (bilums) and food stuff.
She was really excited that she has learned her culture and thanked everyone who came to witnessed.
“This is a very special event and I would like to thank everyone who has taken part in organising it,” Ann Marie said
“All of you have helped me to give me the strength and courage to walk pass the carpet today and I really appreciate and thanked all of you,” she said
Event organising chairman Joseph Gore thanked the Ninkamas for coming back home to PNG and making the event a memorable for all families living in Port Moresby.
A big feast followed with the slaughtering of five pigs,100 chickens, cartons of soft drinks and food were shared to people who attended the event.
Ann Marie and her family will return to Australia next week.