Language Toktok

By CRAIG ALAN VOLKER
Who started Tok Pisin?
IN this monthly discussion we will answer one question about language in PNG and beyond. This month we are looking at how Tok Pisin started, just who started it, and why.
Of all the 830+ languages in PNG, Tok Pisin is by far the most widely spoken. Most of us use it daily in the market, with our friends, and sometimes even in our family. But few people know exactly what its origins are.
Often I hear people say that “the Germans brought it here” or “Europeans didn’t want us to learn English” or “it’s how the Australians used to speak to us in colonial days”.
Just where does the truth lie and who started the language?
The actual origins of Tok Pisin lie in the central Pacific in the middle of the 1800s.
About 30 years ago the late Professor Roger Keesing of the University of California traced its origins to Western when sailing ships had begun hunting whales and trading on the islands.
The ships were headed by American and European officers with crews from many countries, including an increasing number of Pacific Islanders, who usually did not speak either each others’ languages or much English, but who needed to speak to each other and to their officers.
They used the English words they heard as best they could. Some learned English well, but others ended up using English words in phrases and sentences like their own Pacific languages.
Some also used words from Chinese Pidgin English that they heard on trading trips to Chinese ports, such as the Portuguese words sabe (“to know”) and pequeno (“small”, which ended up as pikinini).
When there was a word that was common to many Pacific languages, such as susu (“breast” or “milk”), they used that word instead of an English word.
As new sailors came on board, they learned this pidgin from older hands.
The pidgin came on land when sailors returned home. When ships moved into Melanesia in search for sandalwood and bêche-de-mer (sea cucumbers) for trade with China and later for blackbirding, the language followed them.
Pidgin English became so identified with the bêche-de-mer trade that in Vanuatu it is still called Bislama, a local way of saying “bêche-de-mer”.
On plantations in Queensland and Sāmoa, blackbirded Melanesians from many different languages had to live and work together.
Those who knew Pidgin English from contact with sailors taught it to others. It was easier than learning English because the grammar was based on Pacific ways of speaking.
In any case, few of the blackbirded plantation workers had many opportunities to mix with Europeans often enough to learn English.
When blackbirded workers returned home to Melanesia, they brought the language with them and taught it to any of their wantoks or relatives who might be going to work on plantations in the new German colony in the Bismarck Archipelago.
Here they sometimes heard German words such as raus (“get out”) or gumi (“rubber”), that do not appear in the Solomons or Vanuatu.
Many of the first plantations were in the Tolai areas of New Britain, where workers started to use Kuanua words such as kakaruk (“chicken”) and lapun (“old person”).
The way they put words together also became more like Kuanua. As Rabaul was the capital of the German colony, this was the type of Tok Pisin that workers and policemen took to other areas.
This process continued under the Australian administration. As people from more and more language groups mixed together, the language spread to new areas. Even if Australian school teachers punished students who spoke Tok Pisin in school, this was the language that Melanesians preferred to use with each other because it was based on Melanesian ways of putting words into sentences.
After Independence every increasing mobility helped it to spread throughout the southern part of the country and into interior areas like Enga, where it had not been spoken before.
The important thing to notice in all this is that Tok Pisin was not invented by Westerners or forced upon them by colonial masters.
It was a Pacific solution to deal with the dilemma of Pacific Islanders who were suddenly thrown together because of colonialism. Papua New Guineans have a strong desire to make human connections.
Tok Pisin is result of this strong desire. What began as a very Melanesian reaction to the new colonial order has become the linguistic symbol of a new Melanesian nation.
Professor Volker is a linguist living in New Ireland and an Adjunct Professor in The Cairns Institute, James Cook University, Queensland. He welcomes your language questions for this monthly discussion at [email protected] or PO Box 642,Kavieng.