tree kangaroo in PNG pidgin

[Robin Hide]

(Please excuse crosslisting - this request (with the Mihalic specific 
addition -see below) has also been sent to AASnet and ASAO).

Gaikovina Kula, the PNG Country Director for Conservation International, is 
looking for information on what PNG pidgin speakers call tree kangaroos 
(Dendrolagus spp.) in tok pisin.
For instance, kapul longpela tel, sikau bliong diwai, sikau antap all 
appear in documents but reported everyday usage by villagers appears scarce.
If anyone has useful information or suggestions, could they reply directly 
to him at:
gkula at conservation.org
It would be useful to include good geographical/linguistic location 
details  (Province/district/language group or similar), and the year(s) the 
information refers to.
I would also be grateful for a copy of any information, or could forward it 
to him.

I have already sent him the following:

Gai,
there is a project underway revising Mihalic's Pidgin Dictionary- see:
http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/PNG/MIHALIC/Index.htm

I see the Project does not yet have an entry for kapul, but has the 
following for sikau, which follows Mihalics original Dictionary in 
favouring kapul for tree kangaroo:

 >sikau
The marsupial family of ‘macropods’ number 15 species of the genera Macropus,
Dorcopsis, Dorcopsulus, Dendrolagus and Thylogale (Flannery 1990). However, 
typically
the tree kangaroos, Dendrolagus, are classed as kapul by most speakers, not 
with the rest
as sikau, which are more specifically the ground-living macropods.

See original Mihalic entry.

Noun forms

    1.Marsupial: ground-living macropod: the forest wallabies (Dorcopsis 
sp. and
      Dorcopsulus sp.), pademelons (Thylogale sp.), and Agile Wallaby (Macropus
      agilis).

© Revising the Mihalic Project, 21 Jun 2002.

and

Gai,
two other versions of pidgin names for tree kangaroos that appear in documents:

1. Tree kangaroo - sikau bilong antap
in: Pidgin/English Dictionary: as spoken in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. 
List compiled by Terry D. Barhorst and Sylvia O'Dell-Barhorst.
http://www.june29.com/HLP/lang/pidgin.html

and also the same: “ sikau bilong antap tree kangaroo”
in: the One (Torricelli Language) dictionary, see:
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/~mardonoh/One/OneTPEngl.pdf

but from Madang comes:

2. Samuel Hiuk: Bikpela kapul bilong diwai i gat longpela tel (About the Great
Tree Kangaroo) [pdf file 160kB, Parataxonomist Training Center, Madang]
http://www.entu.cas.cz/png/ptcleaflets.htm

em nau, planti nem bai kamap!  But the different usages of sikau/kapul are 
intriguing....

Robin


Thanks.

  Robin Hide
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