Wokpain

[BURTON John]

Perhaps this is the beauty of Tok Pisin, namely that none of the variations
is intrinsically right but that talking public swills these things around in
their mouths and either stabilises a main variant or let's things go on as
they are with less used terminology.

I think "wokpain" would win a wordsmith's elegance and simplicity award (and
there was a fashion for this in the 1970s) but I haven't myself heard it in
the wild. (I'd love to!)

John Burton

N.B. our IT trainee spent 2 hours on Friday trying to get me through our
firewall - things are not quite right yet, but as soon as they are I will
upgrade the web pages.

> In Lababia (Huon Gulf area) my research was routinely
> referred to by villagers as "wok painimaut". I never
> heard "wok pain" or wok painim" being used however.
> I'm not sure if "wok painimaut" is common in rural
> areas of the Huon Gulf or Morobe Province generally or
> whether its use came to Lababia by way of the
> Lae-based NGO that is facilitating the ICAD project in
> the village. They had commissioned a number of
> biodiversity studies before I arrived - those studies
> also being referred to  either as "wok painimaut" or
> "rises".