[Mihalic] "Vaialens"

[David Week (personal)]

Hi Martha

> I am baffled by the hostility to the incorporation of new words into Tok
> Pisin. This is the main way that all languages change. 

Not hostile at all. Rather, it's the method at work here which gets my goat. This is not adoption: this is injection.

(a)	My friend's complaint is primarily against expatriate managers who can't speak Tok Pisin properly, but think that they can get away with putting up notices in what is basically broken English. Similar, is the short-term expat workers who think that the words "Em i" followed by broken English constitute Tok Pisin.

(b)	Here's what I find objectionable about this poster:

1	Created by an international NGO, who, it seems to me, would rather transliterate international jargon that actually find out how to say it in the local language. No way of saying "violence" in Tok Pisin? You must be joking. 

2	The international NGO is supposed to be communicating an important public service message to the broad mass of Papua New Guineans. This is not the place for inventing new words. In this context, an international NGO seeking to communicate in Tok Pisin should seek to use Tok Pisin as she is spoke.

3	I question the legitimacy of foreign agencies making up new Tok Pisin words at all. I apply the "shoe is on the other foot" test: how would I feel if an American ad agency, say, communicated to me (in Melbourne) with some "Australianism" they had dreamed up, on the basis of they think we Australians speak. It's insulting, and in the same basket as the expats with their broken English. 

I would be interested in knowing if there are recent cases in which English has been expanded by non-English speakers attempting to communicate by Anglicizing their own words (rather than by English speakers adopting foreign words.) 

(c)	Another public service posted (funded by AusAID), had this slogan: "Nogat condom? Maski long wip." I had to ask what "wip" meant, and my friend made a suggestive, whip-like movement with his body. That explained both the meaning and the etymology of the word perfectly.

"Wip",  and "loanoda", seems to me to be examples of the organic growth of Tok Pisin: language evolved by the language users. "Vaialens" seems to me to be a case of a foreign agency making up new words, and in so doing rendering insult to Tok Pisin community: because in no other language would one dream of doing so. It only happens with Tok Pisin because many foreigners conceptualise it as broken English.

David

On 16/12/2009, at 8:11 AM, Martha Macintyre wrote:

> I am baffled by the hostility to the incorporation of new words into Tok
> Pisin. This is the main way that all languages change. And as for
> alternative spelling - 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. Besides, if they have been incorporated it makes
> sense to keep TP spelling system (such as it is)for new words.
> Martha
> 
> 
> On 16/12/09 7:46 AM, "David Week (personal)" <davidweek at cal.berkeley.edu>
> wrote:
> 
>> Encountered on a recent trip to PNG, on an NGO-produced poster about family
>> violence: "vaialens".
>> 
>> This reminds me of a friend's constant complaint:
>> 
>> Tok Pisin: it's a language, not an alternative spelling system.
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