When explaining how European explorers visited or “discovered” a new place, little attention is paid to how they communicated with the people who were already there. Especially if it was the first time a European had landed, natives almost surely did not speak a language the explorers knew nor did the Europeans speak any of the native languages. Most people have been in a situation where they were forced to communicate with someone they share no common language with. These situations often result in sign language, pointing, noises, and guesses at words the other person will understand, be it in the speaker’s language or her best guess at the other person’s language. Much the same occurred when outside traders came in contact with people with whom they shared no language. If contact between two groups is sustained over a period of time, a standardized form of this rudimentary language arises. This standardized trade language, known as a Pidgin language, is native to nobody and contains elements of the languages of the contact groups, though not exclusively. Tok Pisin, also known as New Guinea Pidgin (NGP) is one of these languages. Its vocabulary is primarily English-based, but its grammar is more similar to Austronesian languages (Wurm 65). However, unlike some Pidgins, which die out when a trade situation ends, Tok Pisin has grown, both in its expressivity and its use. Today it is widely used as a lingua franca in Papua New Guinea and is even some people’s first language. This status places Tok Pisin in a relatively unusual position. Today, it is an expanded Pidgin for most speakers, but a Creole, a Pidgin-based first language, for others.
The rise of Tok Pisin has its roots in trading encounters between Europeans and native Pacific islanders in the 18th and 19th centuries. The “Pacific Jargon English” that emerged when European traders and the inhabitants of some Pacific islands first came into contact was highly varied and mostly invented by independent speakers. The ad hoc nature of these jargons was caused by the limited, sporadic nature of trade interactions. This caused different jargons to be used in different trade areas, between different groups, and even just for a single trade interaction (Mühläusler, “External” 37-38). After 1860, a new form of economic interaction caused the stabilization and trend toward standardization of Pidgin English in the region. Plantations in Queensland, Samoa, and Fiji used indentured laborers who were recruited for fixed periods of time. These workers had little linguistic background in common and ended up resorting to Pidgin English to communicate with each other and their employers (Mühläusler, “External” 39-40). This more fixed linguistic situation on the plantations forced all members of a single plantation community to speak a mutually intelligible Pidgin English, since it was the only language they had in common. At the end of an employment contract, often two or three years, laborers would return to their home communities and bring with them the Pidgin English they had learned. Because European plantation recruiters used Pidgin English when finding new laborers in these communities, many young people were eager to learn the language of the returning members of their community (Mühläusler, “External” 40). In this way, a relatively standardized version of Pidgin English began to spread within the system of plantation, recruiters, and labor source community. However, there was still no single form of Pidgin English in the early plantation period. Given the geographical and political (owners came from more than one country) fragmentation of the plantation system, no single form of Pidgin English took over. Only within a group of plantations, geographical locale, or area where one group of owner primarily recruited might there be a relatively standard Pidgin.
Tok Pisin is primarily descended from a form of Pidgin English spoken on Samoan plantations in the late 19th century. This is because the main areas of recruitment were areas that would later become Papua New Guinea, and as stated above, indentured laborers and recruiters eventually brought their form of Pidgin English back to the home communities ((Mühläusler, “External” 46-47). By the end of the German colonization of New Guinea, which ended with World War I, Tok Pisin had become a lingua franca for the colonial administration. Its spread was not only associated with the German colonizers though. New Guinea Pidgin also enabled more effective and widespread cross-tribe communication. Previously elite tribe members would learn the languages of their surrounding tribes. Tok Pisin allowed people to learn one language, unassociated with any other tribe, and be able to have rudimentary communication with any other speaker. By World War I, the administrative and cross-tribal advantages of Tok Pisin in such a linguistically fragmented region entrenched Tok Pisin in New Guinea as a lingua franca, not just a trade language to be used with Europeans (Mühläusler, “External” 49). With the Australian takeover of colonial authority after World War I, the use of Tok Pisin continued to grow. This period was perhaps the most important period for the language in terms of its development apart from European lexifier languages. Previously, Tok Pisin had been heavily reliant on English, and to a lesser extent German, as lexifier languages. Because Australian and British settlers wanted to maintain a social distance from natives, Tok Pisin developed without much European influence. Grammar, in particular, saw significant internal development during the interwar period (Mühläusler, “External” 54).
World War II was a major turning-point for the spread of Tok Pisin and reinforced its use as the lingua franca of the region. During the War, Australia, American, and Japanese armies all used Tok Pisin as the main language of their propaganda aimed at New Guineans. The war also caused displacement of certain populations, which led to their cohabitation with other language groups (Mühläusler, “External” 57). These trends of a Tok Pisin media and integration in living situations continued after the war. The post-war attitudes of the colonial administration also had a significant impact on the use of the language and set it on its current trajectory. The social distance that had existed between English-speakers and native New Guineans began to disappear. Previously, English had been the language of whites and Tok Pisin the language of natives. Natives who spoke English were looked at as having exceeded their social status. Following World War II, the Australian government began to break down this barrier by building English-language schools and encouraging New Guineans to learn English (Mühläusler, “External” 60). English became the language of education in New Guinea because of this new policy and even today with an independent Papua New Guinea, most government education is conducted in English (Smith 21).
Tok Pisin is often referred to as New Guinean Pidgin, a term that while partially accurate, is ultimately misleading. This is because Tok Pisin is also spoken as a creolized first language in some communities. The creolization of Pacific Pidgin English is not necessarily new. In the plantation communities of the late 19th century, laborers from different tribes sometimes had children with each other and they could only communicate with them in Pidgin English. As a result, their children spoke Pidgin as their first language and somewhat expanded the language to make it more expressive than a standard pidgin would allow. However, most of the expansion was just borrowing from other languages that they heard around them. Due to the fixed duration of their parents’ contracts, these children always returned at a young age to a community with a single common language and ended up learning that language instead. By the time they were older, these children had often forgotten most of the Pidgin English that had been their first language. Mühlhäusler, an authority on Tok Pisin, pidgin languages, and creolization, uses the above example to illustrate that creolization can only occur on a community not individual level (Mühlhäusler, Growth 172-173). The more permanent multi-lingual community that enabled true, widespread creolization did not occur until after World War II. Large population movements during and after the war as well as a growth in multi-tribal, urban centers created communities were people intermarried and permanently lived with other people who did not speak their native language (Mühlhäusler, Growth 173). This situation was ripe for creolization, which would occur when children of first generation migrants grew up speaking primarily the pidgin language of the community.
However, creolization in Papua New Guinea is markedly different from the typical view of creolization, which has been shaped by study of Caribbean language development. In the Caribbean, creoles developed in a single generation. Slaves from various linguistic backgrounds were brought to a single island and, much like plantation laborers in Samoa, formed a pidgin language that all could understand. However, because there were no defined linguistic communities other than the whole one, almost all of this first generation’s children spoke an expanded, creolized version of the pidgin language. In New Guinea on the other hand, people continue to use Tok Pisin only as an expanded pidgin while other people speak it as their primary language. Tok Pisin, therefore, is a language that is undergoing what Mühlhäusler calls “gradual” creolization instead of the “drastic” creolization of the Caribbean islands. He explains this distinction further:
“The transition from a minimal pidgin to a fully-fledged creole is gradual. It must be added that this is also true for the distinction between first and second language. Paralleling the linguistic and functional expansion of NGP, one can observe a gradual decrease in the age at which NGP is acquired. Though the number of those who learn NGP as their first language is small, more and more children learn NGP together with, or shortly after, a local vernacular. At the same time, a considerable number of speakers are using NGP most of the time because they find it more useful than their mother tongue.” (Mühlhäusler, Growth 169)
Therefore, the creolization of NGP is not so much a necessity in Papua New Guinea as it is a convenience. In all, Mühlhäusler believes that NGP is not symptomatic of creolization in general because of the distinctions outlined above (Growth, 170). Instead, Tok Pisin is highly unusual in its position as a simultaneous creole and pidgin language.
In order for a language to develop from basic pidgin to expanded pidgin to creole, it must significantly expand its lexicon. Initially, pidgins are very rudimentary and have only a few hundred words. The various jargons spoken in the islands that would become Papua New Guinea contained no more than 300 words according to various sources compiled by Mühlhäusler (Growth 182). Mühlhäusler believes that in the case of Tok Pisin, “when new expressions were needed they were borrowed from either English or a local vernacular since mechanisms for the expansion of lexicon from internal resources were nearly always absent”. He is unable to find any traces of a “productive derivational lexicon” from the pre-World War I development of the language (Growth 191). This is possibly due to Tok Pisin’s historical role as a secondary language for almost all of its speakers. English, however, was not the only lexifier for the language. In fact, the languages of the local communities around the plantations, such as Samoan, as well as the native languages of some speakers, such as Tolai, appear to have entered the lexicon. In addition, during the German colonial period, Tok Pisin adopted some German words, particularly for construction and carpentry vocabulary (Mühlhäusler, Growth 192). After World War I, Tok Pisin began a period of internal development with increasing use of derivational vocabulary (237). However, with increased English language instruction after World War II, Tok Pisin is being reintroduced to its original lexifier language. Words of German origin and some of the longer derivational terms developed in the interwar period are being replaced by new base words that are usually of English origin. For example, the noun, record, used to be “plet bilon bokis musik,” but has now been replaced by “rekot.” Mühlhäusler point out that replacements like the one above have occurred organically, meaning that they have not come about through any central language planning authority (242).
English, however, is not just a more complicated version of Tok Pisin. In fact, there exists a relatively complicated relationship between the two languages, primarily because of education and different amounts of familiarity with English. While English is the main source of vocabulary, the syntax of NGP remains relatively unchanged from its 1920s internal development. In this way, no matter how many English words are adopted, Tok Pisin will still remain distinct from English. That said, there is strong pressure on the language by English speakers who regularly pepper their language with English. In the 1970s, Mühlhäusler even went so far as to claims that “speech forms intermediate between NGP and English are developing” (Growth 289). The logical conclusion of Mühlhäusler’s observations along with the fact that English language schooling is only spreading would suggest that there is the possibility of simply adopting English as a national lingua franca in place of Tok Pisin. However, there are several reasons why this does not seem likely in the near future. Geoff Smith, who published a book in 2002 about Tok Pisin, talks about a similar variety of English use. He ultimately believes that decreolization is not occurring in Papua New Guinea though. This is because familiarity with English and Tok Pisin is not at the level it needs to be for widespread change to occur. Tok Pisin remains a secondary, trade language for much of Papua New Guinea’s population (Smith 211). “Normative pressure from second language speakers,” he claims, “is likely to mean that more radical changes do not become community norms” (211). He claims that as long as most people are not truly comfortable with English and Tok Pisin, widely adopted change will be very gradual (211). In his initial research in the 1970s, Mühlhäusler noted that pressures from widely spoken Rural Pidgin, which is less affected by English and usually a second language, kept new English lexicon from being introduced too quickly. Most of the print media at the time used standardized Rural Pidgin and was relatively conservative in adopting new, English-based phrases that their rural constituents would not understand (Growth 299). Though English is the main source for new words in Tok Pisin, the introduction of new words into what is considered standard language is limited by how quickly non-English speakers will accept them.
The relationship between Tok Pisin and English is also significantly affected by perceptions of the two languages. English, historically and currently continues to be respected and perceived as a tool for economic success by many New Guineans. In the 1970s, Mühlhäusler noted that the younger generation associated English with upward mobility (Growth 289). Julie Piau, a Papua New Guinean student studying in Australia during the 1980s, wrote about attitudes towards Tok Pisin by people in her country. She associated the status of English in relation to Tok Pisin and its use in government schools. “A large number of Papua New Guineans cannot see Tok Pisin as the language of instruction in schools […] The reason [parents] send their children to school is to learn English because they do not have to go to school to learn Tok Pisin” (489). Piau’s comment shows a clear divide between what many parents apparently see as the language of the street and home, Tok Pisin, and the language of education and business, English. In his research published in 2002, Smith noted a similar attitude. He claimed that English was “widely regarded as the key to social and economic opportunity and continues to be the language of most government education” (21). In this statement, Smith also implicitly links regard for English with its role as the language of education. It seems that throughout the postwar period, English has been perceived as opening up opportunities. This perception seems to be a significant reason for its use in schools and therefore, its use as a lexifier language.
When hearing or reading about Tok Pisin, it is easy for a foreigner to come to many conclusions about the language. Jared Diamond, an ornithologist of Papua New Guinean birds, had a fairly typical initial reaction to hearing Tok Pisin. He gives the examples of the following Pidgin phrase: “Kam insait long stua bilong mipela--stua bilong salim olgeta samting--mipela i-ken helpim yu tong kisim wanem samting yu laikim bikpela na liklik long gutpela prais.” The phrase translates to “Come into our store--a store for selling everything--we can help you get whatever you want, big and small, at a good price.” Hearing and reading phrases like the one above initially led Diamond to the following reaction: “When I arrived in PNG and first heard Neo-Melanesian, I was scornful of it. It sounded like long-winded, grammarless baby talk” (Diamond). However,
“On talking English according to my own notion of baby talk, I was jolted to discover that New Guineans weren't understanding me. My assumption that Neo-Melanesian words meant the same as their English cognates led to spectacular disasters, notably when I tried to apologize to a woman in her husband's presence for accidentally jostling her, only to find that Neo-Melanesian pushim doesn't mean "push" but instead means ‘have sexual intercourse with.’” (Diamond)
The fact that Diamond, an educated person who also teaches physiology at UCLA, initially felt this way about Tok Pisin shows that it is not a trap only uneducated or closed minded people can fall in to.
It is also easy for a foreigner, particularly an English speaker, to criticize the lack of vocabulary of the language. Wurm, author of several papers on Tok Pisin, disputes this notion and claims that it is largely a result of imposing European standards on the expressiveness of the language. Though Tok Pisin is unable to thoroughly communicate what people can express in English, it does an adequate job for communication in modern New Guinean culture. Wurm believes that the language will need to continue developing to reflect changes in New Guinean culture, but that as long as this occurs, Tok Pisin will remain relevant and adequate for the needs of New Guineans (70). Though Wurm’s observations were made more than 20 years ago, Smith’s more recent research, showing that Tok Pisin is still mostly used as a secondary language of intertribal communication, shows that it has remained relevant to the people of Papua New Guinea.
Tok Pisin is a highly unusual language in several respects. Its position on the Pidgin and Creole spectrum is indefinite given its tremendous variety in speakers and levels of fluency. A sizable minority of people speaks Tok Pisin as their first language. However, the majority of speakers still use it as an expanded Pidgin. There is also a divide in how many Tok Pisin speakers also speak English, a divide that leads to conflicting pressures on the direction of the language’s development. These heterogeneous factors, along with the intense fragmentation of language groups in Papua New Guinea itself, make it difficult to understand all of the influences on the language. However, the role of English in education and its apparent pressure on Tok Pisin will likely continue to be very important to how the language develops. Though experts like Mühlhäusler have significantly contributed to the understanding of New Guinean Pidgin and thoroughly documented its usage, further research is still needed. How the gradual creolization of Tok Pisin compares to the creolization of Caribbean languages merits further study, especially given that Tok Pisin is in the process of creolization. Linguistic interactions between creolized, or first language speakers, and less familiar speakers have not been studied sufficiently either. In terms of the historical and future development of Tok Pisin, it will be interesting to see whether comprehensive English language schooling across the country, if it ever occurs, leads to decreolization and adoption of English or heavy lexical borrowing into Tok Pisin, but its continued use and difference from English.
Works Cited
Works Cited
Diamond, Jared. "Reinventions of Human Language." Natural History 100.5 (1991): 22-28. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 6 June 2010.
Mühläusler, Peter. “External History of Tok Pisin.” Ed. Wurm, S. A, and P. Mühläusler. Handbook of Tok Pisin (new Guinea Pidgin). Canberra, A.C.T., Australia: Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 1985.
Mühlhäusler, Peter. Growth and Structure of the Lexicon of New Guinea Pidgin. Canberra: Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 1979.
Piau, Julie. “Some Current Attitudes Toward Tok Pisin.” Ed. Wurm, S. A, and P. Mühläusler. Handbook of Tok Pisin (new Guinea Pidgin). Canberra, A.C.T., Australia: Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 1985.
Smith, Geoff P. Growing Up with Tok Pisin : Contact, Creolization, and Change In Papua New Guinea's National Language. London: Battlebridge Publications, 2002.
Wurm, S.A. “Status of Tok Pisin and Attitudes Towards It.” Ed. Wurm, S. A, and P. Mühläusler. Handbook of Tok Pisin (new Guinea Pidgin). Canberra, A.C.T., Australia: Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 1985.
