Toktok Pijin

Taem bifoa mi stap lelebet lo Solomon Aelan mi lanem tok lelebet pijin. Bae mitufala stap lo Solo mi wandem save staka pidgin. Mi lanem samfala.

Last time I stayed for a while in the Solomons I learnt a little bit of Pijin English. When we decided to come back I wanted understand a lot more. I'm learning some.

Well I have to admit I made use of our recently aquired Pijin-English dictionary for the spelling, but I have learn't enough (and not much more) to be able to put together basic sentances like this. It's certainly enough to intrigue me about what was not recognised as a legitimate language by linguists until a few decades ago - it was described as "bastardised English baby talk".

Pijin is said to have developed in the Solomons in the late 1800s out of a need for European fishermen and Copra plantation managers to communicate with the local workforce. It was then adopted and formalised by missionaries. Unlike Tok Pisin from PNG and Bislama from Vanuatu there were no other languages influencing its development so many of the words are taken from english with little other than a slight change to pronounciation. I supose it is for this reason that the language was disregarded by linguists. However unlike its neighbours the Solomons Pijin does have quite a bit more grammatical complexity.

Another fascinating aspect to the language is that the english words adopted are those popular around 150 years ago. So if you want to talk in the future tense you add bae to the start of the sentance ie.
Bae iu talem mi wea bae iu godaon
You will tell me where you want to get out (of the car)
The bae come from the now antiquated future tense term "bye and bye". Another old term is very frequently used. Save which sounds like sarv-aye means to understand and, I assume, comes from savvy. One of the first and most useful phrases is Mi no save I don't understand.

The use of bae in the first sentance also illustrates another interesting quirk of Pijin which is there is almost no grammar for questions. You simply state what you want and put a raised inflection at the end. This gave me some grief to begin with when I would ask Iu hao? which is How are you? and receive a blank stare until I repeated it with the inflection and get a friendly Mi oraet I'm alright.

If you are trying to pronounce these phrases as you go I should point out they sound almost the same as the english equivalent. The spelling comes partly from a slight reworking of words to accomodate the fact that their melanesian heritage has a few less sounds. For example there are no...
sh, so sharl becomes sak
ch, so church becomes sios
th, so throw becomes troem
nt, so sacrament becomes sakramen
g, so age becomes eij
x, so icebox becomes aesbokis
r, so door becomes doa

Vowels sound as follows...
a as in father
e as in bed
i as in fit
o as in rot
u as in to and/or good

My favourite quirk so far is when an english word or phrase seems to have a completely different meaning until you understand the context. An good example is, if you were asked...
Bae iumitufala go lo taon nomoa? Which sounds phonetically like "Bye you-me-two-fella go low town no-more?" You might be forgiven for thinking we were no longer going to town. However a literal translation would read...
Soon shall you and I go to town and nothing but? Nomoa is often used as an emphasis ie. Mi gud nomoa! As if to reinforce the complexity of this "baby talk" nomoa can also mean no longer! Some words seem to have two meanings. I wanted to ask what happened to a local worker's
knee the other day, it uses what I think is a "language" word - that is one from a local language and goes...
Wot nao kasim knee blong iu?
But then I heard kasim used in relation to going to a house such as
Bae iumitufella kasim haus blong iu?
It was then explained that kasim really means arrived so can be used in both contexts..
What has arrived upon your knee? , and
Shall we go to/arrive at your house?

Other favourites of mine are onomatapias like chicken which is ko-ko-raku, much more accurate than cock-a-doodle-do if you ask me. I also like the oblique uses of words, for example clothing is kaleko and lots is staka.

bae mi go lo waka, mifala bos lukim