![]() Borrowed words sometimes have a different meaning from that in English, e.g., baksait means ‘back’.īelow are some common words and phrases in Tok Pisin.There’s also Obodo Oyibo, borrowed from the Igbo language. ‘Koro’ is borrowed from Isoko while ‘Lungu’ is Hausa meaning ‘short cut’, ‘dark alley’ or ‘dirt road’ depending on the context it is used in. For instance, ‘Walahi’ is a Hausa word that means ‘sincerely or truthfully’. Many borrowings are reduplicated, e.g., toktok ‘conversation’. Pidgin borrows words from indigenous languages and English.Many words have a wider range of meanings in Tok Pisin than they do in English, for instance gras means ‘grass, hair, fur, feathers’, kukim means ‘cook, burn’.The borrowed words sometimes have a different meaning, e.g., baksait means ‘back’.However, there are many words that come from other languages. Most of the vocabulary of Tok Pisin comes from English.There are only two prepositions in Tok Pisin: bilong ‘belong’ which means ‘of” or ‘for,’ e.g., laplap bilong alta ‘altar cloth ‘, and long which means everything else, e.g., long bek ‘backwards’. The present progressive tense is marked by stap, the past tense is marked with bin ‘been ‘, and the future tense is marked with bai ‘by and by’.Some verbs such as kaikai ‘eat’ are not marked for transitivity. Most Tok Pisin verbs consist of a stem borrowed from English, French, or a local language plus the ending – im ‘him’ to mark transitivity, e.g., givim ‘give’.The language is widely used in mass media and religious services. There is a weekly Tok Pisin newspaper Wantok (‘one talk’), and many government publications are also in Tok Pisin. ![]() Tok Pisin is also used in Radio Australia’s Tok Pisin broadcasts. Today, however, communities can choose the language for use in the first three years of elementary education. Until recently, English was the official language of education in PNG, although Tok Pisin was widely used in community and church-run pre-schools and vocational schools. Although many people feel that Tok Pisin is inferior to English, most accept it as a separate language, important for PNG’s national identity. It is the first language of people residing in mixed urban areas who pass it on to their children, and the second language of over 4 million people country-wide. ![]() English is more widely used for official business but Tok Pisin serves as a lingua franca for speakers of PNG’s 820 different languages. ![]() The constitution of Papua New Guinea (PNG) recognizes Tok Pisin as a national language, along with Hiri Motu and English.
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