A New Course in Tok Pisin (New Guinea Pidgin)

Tok Pisin is one of the two major lingua franca of Papua New Guinea. Throughout Papua New Guinea, speakers of Tok Pisin can now be encountered increasingly in areas which have otherwise been the exclusive realm of Hiri Motu, the other major lingua franca of the area. The language has been gaining tremendously in importance and prestige during the last few years. It always has been, and continues to be, the major means of intercommunication amongst Papuans and New Guineans who have no other language in common. It has been used for a long time throughout Papua New Guinea for administrative purposes, but it's importance has been greatly enhanced through its becoming the language of discussion in the majority of local government councils and the Parliament. It seems that Tok Pisin is heading towards becoming the unofficial national language of Papua New Guinea, a role which it is already fulfilling in some ways. Tok Pisin is a pidgin language whose vocabulary is derived from, but by no means identical with, English to the extent of 70-80 percent, with 15-20 percent based on indigenous languages, but mainly Tolai of northern New Britain, and 5 per cent on other languages, predominantly German. Its structure is in many ways un-English and is patterned on that of the Austronesian languages of the South-Western Pacific.