No subject

[Jean Kennedy]

Questions:
1. Bus travellers are ol pasindia. Are people who go by other conveyances
pasindias too?
Yes. Canoe travel in Manus has three modes: baim pinis (pay to charter the
canoe, for fuel and crew to run it.  Ideally this means you go when and
where you want, arranged in advance. In practice, it often means you wait
around for days);
pasindia (pay a fixed price to travel on a canoe which is sailing for some
other reason - generally cheap and reliable but you have about 5 minutes
notice); 
kalap nating wantaim (you go for free, at the owner/ charterer's pleasure).
Thus the following usages:  mi laik go long taun. i gat wanpela kanu i stap
na gutpela mota inap mi baim em long tunde bihain?  mi harim toksave long
yu bai go long taun.  olrait mi pasindia long yu? maski, inap yu kalap
nating. 
The same arrangements applied to road transport - whether called PMV or
not.  I have travelled pasindia on a public works bulldozer, also kalap
nating (and sometimes wished that I could charter one).  

2. Has anybody heard haus pasindia recently? I think most speakers would be
confused by it.
Sounds ok to me - I heard it in several places around Milne Bay a couple of
years ago.

3. Isn't a pasindia meri a woman believed to be sexually promiscuous, rather
than a prostitute? She is accused of going from man to man, and although
this may have been an early manifestation of the sex industry, is there not
now a clear distinction between a pasindia meri and a prostitute?

I think this sense is as much that of freeloader or parasite as
promiscuous.  But it now occurs to me that the distinction between pamuk
and pasindia meri might be that the former  expects payment for sex (is the
client then pasindia?) and the latter expects free beer, food,
accommodation etc, outside a socially sanctioned marriage.
 
UPNG students regularly used pasindia to describe those who turned up at
tutorials and scribbled notes without contributing anything to the discussion.

It's interesting that pasindia seems to mean payment for transport, but may
mean  freeloading in other contexts.  To confuse things further,  I once
had a box of archaeological specimens (over the wt limit) loaded free by
local Air Niugini staff in Manus - spia botel i go long UPNG em pasindia
tasol.

5. How is it pronounced? Is it not pronounced identically in TP and English,
i.e. pasinja? Is 'pasindia' one of a range of words whose orthodox pidgin
spelling moves the representation of the sound away from how it is actually
said?
Yes, I think so, although all the Manus speakers I can think of say
pasinja, even though some speak excellent english.
Cheers, jk.

 






Dr Jean Kennedy
Visiting Fellow
Archaeology and Natural History
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
The Australian National University
Canberra ACT 0200

jkennedy at coombs.anu.edu.au
telephone 02 6249 5974