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Bislama
Bislama (English /ˈbɪsləmɑː/; Bislama: [bislaˈma]; also known under its earlier name in French Bichelamar [biʃlamaʁ]) is a creole language, one of the official languages of Vanuatu. It is the first language of many of the «Urban ni-Vanuatu» (those who live in Port Vila and Luganville), and the second language of much of the rest of the country’s residents. «Yumi, Yumi, Yumi», the Vanuatu national anthem, is in Bislama. More than 95% of Bislama words are of English origin; the remainder combines a few dozen words from French, as well as some vocabulary inherited from various languages of Vanuatu, essentially limited to flora and fauna terminology. While the influence of these vernacular languages is low on the vocabulary side, it is very high in the morphosyntax. Bislama can be basically described as a language with an English vocabulary and phonology and anOceanic grammar. HistoryDuring the period known as Blackbirding, in the 1870s and 1880s, hundreds of thousands of Pacific islanders (many of them from the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) archipelago) were enslaved and forced to work on plantations, mainly in Queensland, Australia and Fiji. With several languages being spoken in these plantations, a pidgin was formed, combining English vocabulary with grammatical structures typical of languages in the region. This early plantation pidgin is the origin not only of Bislama, but also of Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea and Pijin of the Solomon Islands, though not of Torres Strait Creole north of Australia. This pidgin started spreading over the Vanuatu archipelago at the turn of the 20th century, as the survivors of Blackbirding began to come back to their native islands: knowledge of this pidgin would facilitate communication not only with European traders and settlers, but also between native populations of remote islands within the archipelago. This is how Bislama was born, progressively evolving separately from other related pidgins from the Pacific. Because Vanuatu is the most language-dense country in the world (one count puts it at 113 languages for a population of 225,000), Bislama usefully serves as alingua franca for communication between ni-Vanuatu, as well as with and even between foreigners. Besides Bislama, most ni-Vanuatu also know their local language, the local language of their father and that of their mother, and their spouse, and formal schools are taught in English or in French. Over the past century or so, Bislama has evolved to what is currently spoken and written. Only recently (1995, with second edition in 2004) has the first dictionary of Bislama been published, and this has helped to create a uniform spelling of Bislama. NameThe name of Bislama (also referred to, especially in French, as «Bichelamar») comes via the early 19th century word «Beach-la-Mar» from pseudo-French «biche de mer» or «bêche de mer», sea cucumber, which itself comes from an alteration of the Portuguese «bicho do mar». In the early 1840s, sea cucumbers were also harvested and dried at the same time that sandalwood was gathered. The names biche-la-mar and ‘Sandalwood English’ came to be associated with the kind of pidgin that came to be used by the local laborers between themselves, as well as their English-speaking overseers. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in an account of his travels through the Pacific in 1888 and 1889, “the natives themselves have often scraped up a little English,… or an efficient pidgin, what is called to the westward ‘Beach-la-Mar’.”’. In Jack London’s story «Yah! Yah! Yah!», one of his «South Sea Tales», there is repeated a reference to “a bastard lingo called bech-de-mer”, and much of the story’s dialogue is conducted in it. Today, the word «bislama» itself is seldom used by younger speakers of Bislama to refer to sea slugs, as a new re-borrowing from pseudo-French «bêche de mer», which has taken the form «besdemea», has become more popular. GrammarTwo frequent words in Bislama are «long» and «blong», which take the place of many prepositions in English or French. «Long»Long as ‘next to’, ‘by’, ‘beside’ etc… long as ‘at’ or ‘to’ long as ‘in’ Long holds many other related meanings, and is sometimes used in improvisation. «Blong»Originally from the English word «belong», blong takes the place of ‘of’ or the genitive case in other languages. Just like of in English, it is one of the most widely used and versatile words in the language, and can indicate possession, country of origin, defining characteristics, intention, and others.
VerbsVerbs in Bislama usually consist of a stem word (borrowed from English, French or indigenous languages); most transitive verbs add to this a transitive suffix.The form of that suffix is /-em/, /-im/, or /-um/, depending on vowel harmony. If the last vowel of the verb’s stem is either -u- or -i-, then that vowel will be copied into the transitive suffix. For all other stem vowels, the transitive suffix has its default form /-em/:
Verbs do not conjugate. There is a past tense and a future tense marker that usually goes at the beginning of the sentence or next to the verb. For example:
NounsThe plural is formed by putting «ol» before the word: bia=beer. Ol bia = «beers». «Ol» comes from the English «all». When used with numbers, the singular form is used. 2 bia, 3 bia, etc… PronounsThe personal pronouns of Bislama feature four grammatical numbers (singular, dual, trial and plural). They also encode the clusivity distinction: 1st person non-singular pronouns (equivalent of Eng. we) are described as inclusive if they include the addressee (i.e. {you + I}, {you + I + others}), but exclusive otherwise (i.e. {I + other people}). Bislama pronouns do not decline.
Aspect markersno : not
nomo (placed before the predicate): no/any more
nomo (placed after the predicate): only
neva : never
jes : shows an action that has just occurred
stat : start, commencement of a process
stap : ongoing or habitual action
gogo : continual action
bin : (been) — completed action
finis : finished, past tense (when before object)
finis : already (when after object)
mas : must
traem : try
wantem : want
save : can, know; from the English use of ‘savvy’, but originally from Portuguese.
sapos : (suppose) if
Internal variationDialects exist, based mainly on different pronunciations in different areas which stem from the different sounds of the native languages. The future tense marker can be heard to be said as: Bambae, Mbae, Nambae, or Bae. There are also preferences for using Bislama or native words that vary from place to place, and most people insert English, French, or local language words to fill out Bislama. So in the capital city it is common to hear ‘computer’; in other places you might hear ‘ordinateur’. Pacific creole comparison
Literature and samplesThe longest written work in Bislama is the Bible completed in 1998.
Yumi, Yumi, Yumi
Published - February 2016
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