Animals - part 4 - other
Hela, Eric
erich at morobegold.com.pg
Sun Oct 21 18:52:03 EST 2001
Some comments, the way many Papua New Guineans use:
abus - any edible protein food from animal
korakum/kurakum/korokum- any red/black ant
kiau - general name for egg
Eric Hela
Information Technology Officer
Morobe Consolidated Goldfields
Wau, Morobe Province. Papua New Guinea.
phone: 675 474 6208; fax: 675 474 6344
mailto:erich at morobegold.com.pg <mailto:erich at morobegold.com.pg>
-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas H. Slone [mailto:THSlone at usa.net]
Sent: Sunday, October 21, 2001 10:08 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Animals - part 4 - other
Examples below are again from Wantok Newspaper's Stori Tumbuna unless
otherwise noted.
Other animal definitions:
abus: 1. as per Mihalic 2. girl (Tok Piksa) (Mühlhäusler, 1991: 640,
644-645)
Question: A. Mihalic says abus is derived from a Gazelle Peninsula language.
Romaine (1992: 158-159) says it's from the "English animals borrowed in the
early stages of development and subjected to various natural phonological
changes (i.e. /l/ vocalization, loss of unstressed syllable, and replacement
of /m/ with homorganic stop") or from Gazelle Peninsula words for animal
such as basi, basibasi, pasi, and posi. Anyone care to comment on this?
Comments: It will be useful to note degree of offensiveness for some
meanings. Meaning 2, above, probably would cause offense for example.
Also, it might be a good idea to have a summary description of registers:
Tok Piksa = metaphoric speech, Tok Bokis = secretive speech, Tok Pilai =
play-speech (see Brash, 1971), Tok Masta, sports speech, theological speech,
student speech, rural and urban speech, and any others. It might also be
useful to have a description of popular but fake or incredible Tok Pisin.
Two examples of this are: helicopter as "Mixmaster belong Jesus Christ"
[sic] (Liu, 1988) and piano as "Wan bigfella bokis inside he got plenty tiit
all-same sark an time missus he hitim an kickim he cry out too much." [sic]
(Rushton, 1983: 82). A similar "definition" for piano appears in Aerts
(1987: 25), quoting Friederici (1911): "Big fellow bokkes suppose misses he
fight him, he cry too much." [sic]
bataflai: common spelling of bataplai in Wantok
binatang bilong saksak: sago beetle. Sago beetles (Rhyncophorus ferringinlus
papuanus) are often encouraged to grow inside fallen sago trees. The beetle
grubs eat the pith of the tree. The grubs are eaten by humans with relish
since they are high in nutrition (May, 1984: 95).
blakbokis: flying fox; large, frugivorous bats (Pteropus spp., probably
conflated with other species in the Pteropodidae family) (Flannery, 1995:
347-402)
Question: would liklik blakbokis refer to other bats?
dokorok /rokrok / prok: frog (Mihalic; Murphy, 1985: 60)
donki: mule (Murphy, 1985: 60)
grasop, grasopa: grasshopper, cricket, katydid (order Orthoptera)
karakum, korakum, kurakum: 1. large red ant (Mihalic; Steinbauer, 1998: 53)
2. to scramble for (i.e., scramble like an ant) Examples: "Na long nait
planti ol blakbokis i save karakum long kaikai o pikinini diwai long nait."
"Ol i save karakum antap long dispela diwai." "Man ol i karakum stret long
kaikai pikinini bilong wanpela diwai em i mau pinis."
kiau: Mihalic says this is derived from a New Hanover language. Mosel
(1980: 30) says it is from the Gazelle Peninsula. Any comments on this?
maskita / natnat: mosquito (Mihalic; Murphy, 1985: 61)
moran: python; Papua New Guinea has eight species of python (subfamily
Pythoninae of family Boidae) as well as two species of boa (subfamily
Boinae) [O'Shea, 1996: 56-87]. Boas might also be referred to as moran.
plantihan, sentipit: centipede, millipede is probably conflated with
centipede
Note: "plantihan" is only listed in the "Practical Word Groups" section of
Mihalic, but not in the dictionary section. I think there are other cases
like this, but I don't have a list.
rat: 1. rat 2. mouse (liklik rat) 3. small, rodent-like marsupials
spaida: spider (order Araneae), daddy-long-legs (order Opiliones)
References:
Aerts, Theo (1987). "Tok Pilai Tasol." Bikmaus 7(1); 25-34.
Brash, Elton (1971). "Tok Pilai, Tok Piksa, na Tok Bokis (Imaginative
Dimensions in Melanesian Pidgin)." Kivung: Journal of the Linguistic Society
of Papua and New Guinea 4(1): 12-20.
Flannery, Timothy F. (1995). Mammals of New Guinea. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
Friederici, Georg (1911). "Pidgin-English in Deutsch-Neuguinea." Kolonialen
Rudnschau 2 :92-106.
Liu, Melinda (1988). "The 49ers of the Pacific." Newsweek August 15.
Lobban, William D. (1985). "A collection of children's singing games of
Papua New Guinea." Oral History 13(2).
Mosel, Ulrike (1980). Tolai and Tok Pisin: The Influence of the Substratum
on the Development of New Guinea Pidgin, Series B, No. 73. Canberra: Pacific
Linguistics, The Australian National University.
Mühlhäusler, Peter (1979). Growth and Structure of the Lexicon of New Guinea
Pidgin. Series C, No. 52. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian
National University.
Mühlhäusler, Peter (1991). "Watching Girls Pass by in Tok Pisin." English
Around the World: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Jenny Cheshire, ed. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
O'Shea, Mark (1996). A Guide to the Snakes of Papua New Guinea. Port
Moresby: Independent Publishing.
Romaine, Suzanne (1992). Language, Education, and Development: Urban and
Rural Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Rushton, Dorgon (1983). Brush Up Your Pidgin. London: Willow Books.
Steinbauer, Friedrich (1998). Neo-Melanesian-English Concise Dictionary: New
Guinea Pidgin-English. New York: Hippocrene Books.
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