Why do universities teach Tok Pisin?

LANGUAGE

In these monthly discussions we answer one question about language in PNG and beyond. This month we are looking at universities in other countries that offer courses in Tok Pisin and ask why they offer courses in PNG’s most widely spoken language.

WHEN people in PNG think of the language of university study, they usually think of English. Some would say that Tok Pisin has no place at university, even though we all know that if we walk around the campus of any PNG university, the language that we will hear more than any other is Tok Pisin.
Often it is even the language of informal discussions in seminar or staff meetings. But is there any role for Tok Pisin as an actual academic subject? For some universities in China, Europe, Australia, and the United States, the answer is yes. These universities teach Tok Pisin as a foreign language, both to enrolled students and auditing visitors.
In recent years I have taught Tok Pisin to undergraduate and postgraduate students at the universities of Bremen, Augsburg, and Munich in Germany. Usually the class has been offered as a special intensive class, concentrated into whole or half-day sessions over one or two weeks. European students are all fluent in English, so after learning a few tricks about how English words have changed to fit Tok Pisin sound patterns, they usually pick up Tok Pisin vocabulary quickly.
Tok Pisin grammar, however, is based on the grammatical patterns of Austronesian languages of the New Guinea Islands region, which can be difficult for students whose only previous foreign language study has been with European languages with grammatical patterns similar to German or English. Even so, Tok Pisin is relatively easy to learn.
Given the fact that the students tend to be highly motivated, they can make remarkable progress in a very short time. I have found that after only 30 hours of classroom instruction, all students are able to pass the final test for an introductory class— giving a five-minute presentation in Tok Pisin to the class about a simple topic such as “my family”, “a trip I took”, or “my hometown”.
The students come from different backgrounds. Around half have been linguistics students who want to gain experience with a pidgin-creole language instead of just studying it abstractly. Others were planning on going to PNG for fieldwork on scientific or education projects.
At the University of Munich, there was a group of anthropology PhD students who needed to gain basic fluency in a non-European language for graduation and said they thought Tok Pisin sounded like a much easier option than Chinese, Hindi, or Arabic!

Besides studying in class, there is the option of studying Tok Pisin for university credit online. The first university online Tok Pisin course was developed at Divine Word University in 2014 with over 100 students from around the world. Unfortunately, it is no longer being offered.
Taking its place, New Ireland lecturer Jenny Homerang at the Australian National University has developed a series of four online Tok Pisin courses that can be taken either by enrolled students for university credit or by the general public without official credit. At present this is both the world’s only online university Tok Pisin course as well the only Tok Pisin course at any Australian university.
Homerang says that many of her students are Australian public servants going to PNG for projects requiring them to have good communication skills with ordinary people. The course is popular with people outside the university because it is of university standard, but students can study online at home and do not have to travel to the ANU in Canberra to take it.
The online format also offers many opportunities for students to hear and see Tok Pisin in a natural environment.
The Tok Pisin classes at ANU and German universities offer credit towards students’ degrees, but these are elective credits towards students’ degrees in other subjects, as they cannot take a degree in Tok Pisin studies as such. The Beijing Foreign Studies University in China has gone one step further and has begun offering actual degrees in Tok Pisin studies. This programme at a university famous for producing graduates for the Chinese diplomatic corps is an important part of the South Pacific part of the Chinese government’s Belt and Road Initiative and its efforts to strengthen ties with Melanesia.
Language learning always involves learning about a new culture, and Tok Pisin classes are no exception. By watching and discussing television news in Tok Pisin or reading stories about everyday life in PNG, foreign students learn much about PNG current events and ways of living.
For me the most exciting integration of language and culture was being able to offer the Tok Pisin course at the University of Munich in a classroom inside the Museum Fünf Kontinente.
The extensive PNG collection at that museum meant that students could have part of their class observing PNG artefacts and talking about the importance the different items might have in PNG cultures.
Encouraging foreigners to learn a language and becoming familiar with the culture of a new nation is an important form of “soft diplomacy”. This is recognised by countries such as China, Germany, and France, whose governments have set up the Confucius Institute, Goethe Institut, and Alliance Française.
PNG universities and the Department of Foreign Affairs are missing out on a valuable opportunity to create a greater understanding of PNG and its cultures overseas by leaving the teaching of Tok Pisin to foreign institutions.
There is an obvious interest in many parts of the world for university-level Tok Pisin courses. With good planning, this interest could be used by PNG universities and the National Government to make PNG itself the centre for Tok Pisin studies.

• 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 [email protected]. Or continue the discussion on the Facebook Language Toktok page.