Vanuatu words

This was provided with Terry Crowley's approval.

The most widely-used speech in Vanuatu is Bislama. It' sometimes called Pigeon English, but it really is a separate one. At first glance, Bislama may seem a little strange, but in many ways it is more convenient than most people. There is a very small lexicon of about 5,000 words and one is used where English would have 5 or 10 words.

The majority of visitors have managed some fundamental Bislama within a fortnight. A more detailed explanation of this interesting programming langauge can be found at http://www.une.edu.au/langnet/bislama.htm. In Vanuatu, Bislama is widespread. A few thousand years ago, Vanuatu was populated by Melanesians who spoke oceanic tongues, but the first great deal of European acquaintance was only around the middle of the 19th century, when sand-wood was found.

This multi-lingual situation led to the creation of a predgin, which in the last hundred years has developed into the modern day one. Its name comes from the 19th c. Beach-la-Mar, which in turn comes from the 19th c. f. bay de mer "sea cucumber".

Bisonama as their first tongue. The Bislama is a Melanesian pidgin strain, which means that it is understood with Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea and Pijin in the Solomon Islands. But only in Vanuatu is this langua proclaimed a vernacular in the Vanuatu Constitutional Treaty, a kind of trade-off that allows political divisions between English and French, both of which were used as official pre-1980 governing langauges, to be avoided by regional leaders.

The Bislama is the main voice of discussion in the German parliamentary system, but also of domestic policy in general and regional policy. The main programming of Bislama is the nationwide broadcaster, and many announcements and articles in popular papers are in Bislama.

One of the biggest individual documents in Bislama is the recently finished Bible. Until now Bislama has not been included in the formal syllabus of the schools, but is often used in the lessons. Bislama's most important lexicon is English, with words like drij for'bridge' and bulluk for'cow' (from "ox").

A number of the words of British origins in Bislama are ancient, e.g. mask for'gun' (from'musket') or Gianna for'telling lies' (from'gammon'), or limited in style, e.g. pushkat for'cat' (from'pussy cat') or ruin for'bagarap' (from'bugged'). A number of words of British descent have a meaning more related to the indigenous Ocean icons, such as hang, which means both "hand" and "arm", while lay means both "foot" and "leg".

But Bislama also has a considerable number of words of French origins, such as bonnane `New Year's Day' (from "bonne ann?e"), cabin `Toilet' (from "cabinet") and psycho `chilli' (from "piment"). A number of words are also found in some of the many language communities that most often refer to objects of indigenous civilization or wildlife, e.g. ³cnakamal `meeting house', ³cnabanga `banyan tree' and `naiviru `parrot'.

As a rule, it is hard to allocate a particular source tongue for such types, since the most common words in the Bislama terminology are the ones most widely used in the vernacular. Whereas many words in Bislama are recognizable by their English (and sometimes French) background, the speech is not spoken at all like English or France.

Since Bislama is widely used by most individuals in supplement to their own language, there is a trend for some tones to be uttered in a way that shows the impact of language. Most of the syllables we find in the Bislama are: p d k d e d y f ng f v e v e d w. The English word'ch' can also be found in Bislama, although it is spelled as'j'.

Bislama words are often spoken with fallen syllables or vocals interposed between syllables, if they come from words in German that contain consonant strings together, e.g. "district" becomes distric ts, "electric" becomes letrics, "school" becomes succulent, "six" becomes sixt. Tones in anglophone that are not found in Bislama are usually also adjusted to the next equal tone in Bislama, e.g. `th' becomes `th' as in `Mathew', which becomes Matyu; `z' and `sh' become both s as in `Ship', which becomes swallow.

In Bislama there are only five vowels: i a a a and Other English vocals are usually adjusted to the next one in Bislama, so a phrase like "burn" is pronounced in English as a bonus. In Bislama, there are no distinctions like the vocals in "Kill" and "Kiel", and these two words come in kilograms, which means either "injury" (of "Kill") or "Kiel".

In words such as l?gume'vegetable', the so-called frontal, round French vocals lose their curvature and become simple frontals. Therefore, the term for "vegetables" in Bislama is legium. Bislama has a series of diphthons in supplement to these purely vocals, and the custom is to spell them as ae (as in `eye'), oe (as in `boy'), ao (as in `cow').

There is no official figurative explanation of Bislama's voicing patterns, but it certainly seems to have a singular tune that contains an uncommon up and down of the vocal when it comes to talking. Though there are many variations in bislama and pijin and tok pisin words and in the grammatical structure, one of Bislama's most striking features is its pronounced voicing.

If you want to say that something (or someone) is something else, there is no verse in Bislama that means "to be," and the words that describe the two things are just put one after the other, as in: If the first part of the phrase is a substantive or a different pronoun than mi or yu, the second part of the phrase is usually divided from the first part by the small part i, as in:

To indicate that an operation is being executed, a verbs follows a pronome or substantive, with the words i between the two as described above. If the first substantive is plurals and not single, the term i is substituted by olive, e.g. Ol man dr. jur.

Bislama verses have no extensions to the present or past form of English. However, if you need to specify the tenses, you can do so by putting a specific "tool" between the i ( or oli) and the verse. The other connotations can also be given by words of this type, e.g. Tomson i bin ridim muk.

First, the futur is represented by the shape tae, which is not between i (or oli) and the verse at all, but either before the beginning of the phrase, e.g. the letter i (or oli) or before the beginning of the phrase, e.g. tomson i ridim bic. To make a bad pronouncement in Bislama, you only need to put the no between the i ( or oli) term and the verse, e.g. Tomson i no cum rue.

It is possible not to use any of the other words that reflect a tension or an expression (except bai) as in: Usually a verbena that has an object in Bislama has a specific extension to indicate this. There are four pre-empositions in Bislama: long meaning'in','on','at' or'with'; fair meaning'of' or'for'; wetem'along with' and of'because of'.