Comments on: 3 Little Pigs rendered into Papua New Guinea pidgin

By: Robert Engle

Robert Engle — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 16:11:00 +0000

i was amazed at how oddly beautiful the language was its very musical i couldnt wait to hear more

By: Chris Loch

Chris Loch — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:35:00 +0000

I spent 4 or so years of my childhood in Bougainville, PNG… and we had a copy of this. Man, this is truly bizarre.

If you are interested, I recommend you check out George Telek and String Band Music… There was also a great album by Not Drowning Waving called Tabiraan which was a collaboration with a variety of PNG musicians including Telek.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1566155/sunsets-and-drums-in-bougainville

has some cool drumming and a nice Bougainville sunset…

By: Lobes

Lobes — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 04:17:00 +0000

Toksave: In Papua New Guinea pigs are used as currency so this story would have even more resonance.

By: onafilloy

onafilloy — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 01:52:00 +0000

Question: “Yu no gat wan ting ting?…….”

Reply: “I stret nomo!”

By: onafilloy

onafilloy — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 01:42:00 +0000

In Vanuatu the Pidgin is very similar to New Guinea and it is called Bislama. I am a great lover of this language and have discovered some great old Pidgin translations.
“Mixmaster Blong Jesus Christ” meaning helicopter. Prince Charles is called ” Nambawan Pikinini Blong Missus Kwin”. And how about “Basket Blong Titi” meaning Bra.
I was so intrigued by the language that I had to illustrate some of these gorgeous translations.
http://onafilloy.blogspot.com/ I call this series of artwork ‘Pidgin Tok Tok’

By: ncm

ncm — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:30:00 +0000

Joe Hadley did a lot of this with Hawaiian Pidgin, superbly, in the early ’70s. It’s hard to find copies nowadays.

By: Guest

Guest — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:09:00 +0000

‘Me mind gi’ me se de mek me de’

[My mind gives me that I exist] causes [(the fact that) I exist]

‘I think therefore I am’ in Guyanese Creole! :D

(runs away)

By: Guest

Guest — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:03:00 +0000

Nope, not true! Look! :D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin

‘A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable, natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins (which are believed by scholars to be necessary precedents of creoles) in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from pidgins.’ Wow… :D

By: Guest

Guest — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:00:00 +0000

No, because there are many, many pidgin dialects- not just the one. A pidgin, by definition, is a hybrid of two or even more languages. There are all kinds of combinations!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin

I wrote a long, long paper about this… I am kind of obsessed. Yay language; we can always find a way to talk to each other! :P

By: Guest

Guest — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 20:56:00 +0000

Yah, Tok Pisin! Spoken by the Gebusi tribe, among others in Papua New Guinea. Coooool!

Here’s a link to a guy who studied the language and culture, and there are some awesome music recordings, too. :)

http://www.anthropology.emory.edu/FACULTY/ANTBK/

By: Micheal Paige Gmaz Sandbank

Micheal Paige Gmaz Sandbank — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 19:31:00 +0000

Skye, I thought the same thing as soon as I read this post, but then realized it’s the name of the language. Good linguistic eye!

By: BannedinDC

BannedinDC — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 18:33:00 +0000

I may have misunderstood the recording, but it sounds like the wolf has been changed to a dog.

By: Skye MacLeod

Skye MacLeod — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 17:15:00 +0000

Shouldn’t “pidgin” in the post title be capitalized then? :)

By: billstewart

billstewart — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 16:53:00 +0000

It looks much farther from English than the Hawaiian pidgin dialects (though those are closer to English today than they were a century ago.) Hawaiian pidgin supported not only Hawaiian speakers, but also Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, and Filipino farm workers.

I’m curious how they would have rendered “wolf”, since wolves aren’t native to the area. There are tigers on Sumatra (don’t know if they made it to PNG), and some Polynesians had dogs.

By: jhhl

jhhl — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 16:39:00 +0000

I started looking into Tok Pisin in the 70s as a language to use for artificial intelligence conversations, since it’s pretty simple. I like it a lot!
em tasol!

By: Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 15:11:00 +0000

I’m sure you’re formally correct, but the actual name of this language is “Pidgin” (or, in Pidgin, “Tok Pisin.”

By: Skye MacLeod

Skye MacLeod — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 14:27:00 +0000

Technically this isn’t a pidgin, it’s a creole. A pidgin is a first generation language that happens when people who have different language backgrounds (typically slaves) are forced to speak a common language to communicate with each other (usually the slave master’s language). It’s highly erratic syntactically and there are frequent changes in grammar and vocabulary because there are so many linguistic influences. When the pidgin speakers have kids, the little ones standardize the language in terms of syntax and vocabulary. This standardized language is called a creole. This pidgin–>creole process has been used as an argument for universal grammar.

By: shiftdelete

shiftdelete — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 13:23:00 +0000

“Na piky talk.. Na wile doggy talk..”

This could totally be remixed into some crazy hiphop or dubstep samples. Anyone??

By: glamaFez

glamaFez — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 12:49:00 +0000

rendered lol

By: Jurgen Westerhoff

Jurgen Westerhoff — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 11:06:00 +0000

haha, in dutch this is extra funny. liklik pik translates as: licklick cock :P

By: Michael Smith

Michael Smith — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 11:01:00 +0000

My Dad turned up for work one day in PNG. He was shown the broken piece of equipment he had been brought from Aus to fix. It had a sign on it which said “I BUGA UP”.