[Mihalic] "Vaialens"

[John Burton]

I (mildly) disagree because this gives the impression that pidgins are 
not only "reduced instruction set" versions of their donor languages, 
the reduction is happening continuously in the present.

TP, TSC, Bislama, and SIP originate with two regional pidgin provinces* 
- Central Pacific Pidgin and various pidgins spoken in the mainland of 
Australia, whether by cane cutters or Aboriginal people. Obviously the 
main donor language is English and many of the words do look the same as 
modern English ones, but they've been away a long time.

(* if there are intending PhD candidates about, here's a great topic)

The donor English of the 1840s had many words we can barely recognise 
the usage of today:

English pull, to row a boat / TP pul, to paddle a canoe - last 
convincing mainstream citation in the OED is to a passage in Dickens.
English foreward, the fore part of a ship / TP poret, the bow - can't 
say I have ever heard a native speaker of English utter this, although 
movies and books say they do.
English heavy / TP hevi (or heve), as a noun** - there are many words 
like this whose idiomatic usages are worlds apart and very likely have 
roots some way back in time.

e.g. ** wanpela heve i stap = "group of 77 nations unite against bid to 
scrap Kyoto"

"Vaialens" is fine in a "whatever" sort of way. David Week is thinking a 
foreign NGO created this word. We can't know this. NGOs generally leave 
TP notices to local staff, do they not.

John


Martha Macintyre wrote:
> most of Tok Pisin's lexicon is comprised of
> alternative spellings of English words - it's just that some have been
> around longer than others