You
have to remember that half the people don't even speak Bislama, that there
are still the Big Nambas and the Small Nambas on Malekula, the original
bungee jumpers on Pentecost and when you get on Air Vanuatu to fly around
to different islands, that people will pack on chickens or crabs to retail
in the capital. And the plane may make an unscheduled stop on a grass
strip somewhere. It's the kind of place that draws Uhuru jumpers, Central
American Americans, romantics, and exotic types generally. One nice
thing about places like this is that it's so easy to meet the powers that
be, if you have an interest in that kind of thing. The last time I was
here I had dinner with the President on short notice. We dressed in suits,
somewhat approriate to an upmarket French beanery in Port Vila.
But
I would have far more enjoyed, and the President would have been far more
comfortable, sitting around a campfire in his village on Tanna, wearing
a pair of shorts and flip-flops, eating a roast pig. (Not long after that,
he was kidnapped by the Defense Force, who wanted their back wages. All
ended well, however, and the President was released unharmed after the
police arrested the army, the army swore allegiance anew, and everybody
went back to hanging around.)
Unfortunately,
although we covered a lot of interesting ground, we arrived at nothing
conclusive. Part of the reason was the language problem. Although the President
spoke four languages (his native tongue, Bislama, French, and English)
his command of the last two was limited.
Yufala Laekem
Toktok Bislama Plenti Tumas!
I’ve long been
interested in both words and languages. It’s quite important to define
words precisely, because if you don't know exactly what a word means, then
you can't possibly know what you're talking about. It can be quite a problem
when trying to do business with someone from a different culture.
The official
national language of Vanuatu is Bislama, versions of which also arose in
the Solomons (Pidgin) and New Guinea (Tok Pisin). The word Bislama
is apparently a corruption of beche-la-mer, the aforementioned sea slug
that provided a topic of mutual interest for locals and outsiders. A “pidgin”
is a mongrel language with greatly reduced vocabulary and grammar. A pidgin
becomes a “creole” when a group adopts it as a true mother tongue. Pidgins
arose the world over, based on Spanish, French, Dutch, Portuguese—but mainly
English—starting in the 16th century when Europeans encountered natives.
They have a quaint baby-talk aspect, and tended to persist because the
Europeans regarded the natives as incapable of learning their own language,
and were certainly unwilling to learn that of the natives.
Pidgins and
creoles lack linguistic subtleties like number, case, gender, person, tense
and voice. And they tend to have vocabularies, generally derived about
90% from the European tongue, of from 500 to at most 2,000 words, always
dealing with very practical matters. Eventually they are written, and evolve
their own spelling and grammar. For instance, “Why did you hit this
policeman?” evolved into “Belong what name you fight ‘im dis police
fellow boy?” which became “Bilong wonem yu faitem dispela plisboi?”—which
is pronounced just about the same, although the spelling has evolved.
Interestingly,
Chinese Pidgin was spoken for about three centuries, and was used by all
classes of that society when dealing with Westerners. Neither the Chinese
nor the Westerners wanted to learn each others language because of a mutual
feeling of contempt, but that emotion didn't obviate a need to communicate.
The Chinese eventually gave it up because they (correctly) came to feel
the language was seen as ridiculous and demeaning by Westerners.
The pidgin
(although it’s now actually a creole) spoken in the Melanesia was especially
useful because in Vanuatu alone there are 105 mutually unintelligible languages,
and thousands in New Guinea; pidgin is now the official, legal national
language in both places.
The flavor
of the language is one of the more endearing things about Vanuatu. Here
are a few examples:
Prince Charles
is known as “Nambawan pikinini blong Kwin” (Number one pickaninny belong
queen).
You can ask when
the plane lands by saying “Plen bambae I fol daon long wanem taem?”
A piano can be
“Bigfala bokis blong waetman, tut blong em sam I blak, sam i waet… taem
yu kilim emi singaot” (Big fellow box of the European, with some white
and some black teeth; when you hit it, it cries out)
A violin is “Smol
sista blong bigfala bokis sipos yu skrasem bel blong em i krae (Little
sister to the piano; if you scratch its stomach it cries).
A saw is “Wanfala
samting blong kakae wud; I kam i go i kambak; brata blong tamiok”
(Something which eats wood; it comes and goes and comes back again; brother
to the axe).
“Puskat I stronghed”
means “The cat is stubborn.”
“Emi wan basket
blong titi” makes the fashion statement “It is a bra.”
“All these trucks
here are broken” comes out as “Ol trak ia oli bagarap,” showing an Australian
contribution.
......You get
the idea.
I spent most
of a December a few years ago in Curacao, where I had the opportunity to
investigate Papiamento, a type of pidgin Spanish; I promise, however, to
spare you those details unless I’m overwhelmed with cards and letters.
As an endnote, as long as we’re off on a tangent. A “dialect” or “patois”
is a variation of a language which is either regional (like Cockney), or
shared by people of the same social or educational level (also like Cockney,
but especially—perish the thought—Ebonics).
It’s interesting
how Ebonics was able to become such as cause celebre in the United States
a few years ago, whereas Cockney is viewed as just interesting local color
in England. The reason, of course, is that at least one politically correct
school district in California, the People’s Republic of Berkeley if memory
serves me, was going to actually offer courses in it. It impressed me as
an insult to black people, implying they couldn’t deal in standard English
when they choose, the way the Cockneys in England can. The Cockneys would
certainly be insulted if outsiders tried to use their dialect in the schools.
Perhaps a new
pidgin will eventually evolve to solve the language gap the politically
correct claim exists between some white and black Americans. Slang
is a different bird again, best defined as informal, nonstandard usage
with lots of colorful metaphors, exaggerations, and neologisms. The systematic
use of slang can develop into a dialect over time.
