all with an interest in Tok Pisin welcome!
[Latest update: 11 January 2005]
Tok Pisin, spoken throughout Papua New Guinea and a companion language to English and about 800 vernacular languages, is one of at least four extant Pacific pidgin languages: the others are Bislama in Vanuatu, Solomon Islands Pijin in the Solomon Islands, and Torres Strait Creole, also known as Broken, in the Torres Strait. Tok Pisin has about five million speakers of whom one million may learn it as a first language whether or not they achieve fluency in their own vernaculars in early childhood, or in English through exposure at school.
Fr. Frank Mihalic (see obituary) died in the United States in 2001, shortly after retiring from 50 years as a Catholic missionary in Papua New Guinea, as an educator, and as a promoter of Tok Pisin literacy. His key work on Tok Pisin is his Grammar and dictionary of Neo-Melanesian (1959), republished as The Jacaranda dictionary and grammar of Melanesian Pidgin (1971), among many smaller guides and articles. He was the founding editor of the Tok Pisin newspaper Wantok, today published weekly in Port Moresby by Word Publishing.
This is a collaborative project -- you can help if you speak, read, grew up with, research or have anything to do with Tok Pisin -- and it is in its early stages. You will see that topics exist for only a few of the expected 4000-5000 headwords that will be dealt with eventually. The present layout is not particularly fixed and may well change in the future. Please email anything you want to say to the discussion list. First language speakers, speakers from areas where variants are spoken, with an inside knowledge of particular trades, professions, church rites, jokes, old people’s talk, children’s talk, indeed anything out of the ordinary, are especially wanted.
Access to the original Mihalic entries is provided, where they have been entered to date, as well as discussions about suggested revisions to particular headwords (see samsam for an example).
A note on Pacific Pidgin English (PPE)
If you have feedback, join the discussion list!
The HTML web pages for the entire site are generated from an Access database. If you want to see how this works, click here.
John Burton John.Burton at anu.edu.au
12 November 2001
revised 21 September 2002
revised 27 May 2003
revised 14 June 2003
revised 5 October 2004
revised 11 January 2005