Bislama

History

During the period of "blackbirding" in the 1870s and 1880s, hundreds of thousands of Pacific islanders (many of them from the New Hebrides – now the Vanuatu archipelago) were taken as indentured labourers, often kidnapped, and forced to work on plantations, mainly in Queensland, Australia, and Fiji. With several languages being spoken in these plantations a localised pidgin was formed, combining English vocabulary with grammatical structures typical of languages in the region. This early plantation pidgin is the origin not only of Bislama, but also of Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea, and Pijin of the Solomon Islands; though not of Torres Strait Creole in the north of Australia.

This creole started spreading throughout the Vanuatu archipelago at the turn of the 20th century, as former blackbirds and their descendants began to return to their native islands. Knowledge of this creole would facilitate communication not only with European traders and settlers, but also between native populations, and because Vanuatu is the most language-dense country in the world (one count puts it at 113 languages for a population of 225,000), Bislama usefully serves as a lingua franca for communication between ni-Vanuatu, as well as with and between foreigners. Although it has been primarily a spoken-only language for most of its history, the first dictionary of Bislama was published in 1977. A new dictionary was published in 1995. This, along with its second edition in 2004, has helped to create a standardised and uniform spelling of written Bislama.

Besides Bislama, most ni-Vanuatu also know their local language, the local language of their father and/or mother, as well as their spouse, oftentimes. The country's official languages of tuition in schools and educational institutions are English and French.

Dialectal variations

Dialects exist, primarily due to differences in pronunciation in different places under the influence of the surrounding indigenous languages' phonologies. For example, the future tense marker can be pronounced bambae, mbae, nambae or bae.

Preferences for using Bislama or indigenous vocabulary vary by location, although most individuals fill out Bislama with English, French or local vocabulary. In the capital city, computer or kompiuta is heard, although French-based ordinateur may be heard elsewhere.

Pacific creole comparison

Orthography

The Bislama Latin alphabet uses the letters A, B, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U, V, W, Y and the digraphs AE, AO and NG.

An older Latin orthography, used before 1995, had É (now written E), AI and AU (now AE and AO). For those vowels in hiatus, AÏ and AÜ were used (now written AI and AU). Labialized consonants (used in loanwords), now written with a tilde (M̃ and P̃) or a following W (MW and PW), were then spelled with a macron, following the conventions used for some vernacular Vanuatu languages: M̄ was used for and P̄ for .

On the island of Pentecost, the avoiuli script is sometimes used for Bislama. The shapes of the letters derive from sand-drawing. It has distinct letters for NG and NGG, but otherwise corresponds closely to the Latin alphabet above, though capitals are seldom used, punctuation differs, there are digits for higher numbers and logograms for commonly traded commodities such as pig tusks.

Grammar

Two frequent words in Bislama are "long" and "blong", which take the place of many prepositions in English or French.

"Long"

• Long as 'next to', 'by', 'beside' etc.

  Stoa long haos

  The store next to the house.

• long as 'at' or 'to'

  Mi bin stap long ples ia bifo

  I have been to this place before.

  Mi stap long stoa

  I am at the store.

• long as 'in'

  Jea long haos

  The chair in the house.

Long holds many other related meanings, and is sometimes used in improvisation.

"Blong"

Originally from the English word "belong", blong takes the place of 'of' or the genitive case in other languages. Just like of in English, it is one of the most widely used and versatile words in the language, and can indicate possession, country of origin, defining characteristics, intention, and others.

Buk blong mi

The book that belongs to me, my book

Man blong Amerika

Man from America, American.

Hemi woman blong saiens

She is a woman of science, She is a scientist.

Man blong dring

Man of drinking i.e. a drinker

Verbs

Verbs in Bislama usually consist of a stem word (borrowed from English, French or indigenous languages); most transitive verbs add to this a transitive suffix.

The form of that suffix is /-em/, /-im/, or /-um/, depending on vowel harmony. If the last vowel of the verb's stem is either -u- or -i-, then that vowel will normally be copied into the transitive suffix – however, there are rare exceptions. For all other stem vowels, the transitive suffix has its default form /-em/:

Exceptions exist, such as lukim ("look").

Examples of transitive verbs which exceptionally don't take this suffix include: kakae 'eat, bite'; trink 'drink'; save 'know'; se 'say'.

Verbs do not conjugate. The tense, aspect and mood of a sentence are indicated with markers such as stap, bin and bae that are placed in the sentence.

Mi stap kakae taro

I'm eating taro

Mi bin kakae taro

I have eaten taro

Bae mi kakae taro

I will eat taro

Nouns

The plural is formed by putting ol before the word. For example, bia 'beer'; ol bia = "beers". Ol comes from the English "all". When used with numbers, the singular form is used. 2 bia, 3 bia, etc.

Pronouns

The personal pronouns of Bislama closely resemble those of Tok Pisin. They feature four grammatical numbers (singular, dual, trial and plural) and also encode the clusivity distinction: 1st person non-singular pronouns (equivalent of English we) are described as inclusive if they include the addressee (i.e. {you + I}, {you + I + others}), but exclusive otherwise (i.e. {I + other people}). Bislama pronouns do not decline.

The third person singular hem, also written em lacks gender distinction, so it can mean either he, she or it. The predicate marker i – a particle which is placed before the verbal phrase of a sentence – is sometimes merged with the third person pronoun, giving the words hemi and emi, respectively, in singular, and oli in plural.

Tense/aspect/mood markers

• stap + V : (progressive) ongoing or habitual action

  hem i stap kukum kumala

  or:

hemi stap kukum kumala

he/she is cooking sweet potatoes

• bin + V : past tense (with implication that the state is no longer true)

  hem i bin sik long fiva

  she was sick with fever [but is no longer sick]

• V + finis : (perfective) "already" (when placed at the end of a phrase; elsewhere it means "finish")

  hem i kakae finis

  she has already eaten

• bae + V (occasionally bambae): (irrealis) future or hypothetical actions (though, like in English, generally not used in conditional sentences)

  bae mi go long Santo

  I will go to Santo

  sipos plen i no bin fulap, bae mi go long Santo

  If the plane hadn't been full, I would have gone to Santo

• no + V : negative, "not"

  hem i no wantem yam

  he doesn't want yam

• nomo + V: "no longer" (when placed after the predicate; elsewhere it means "only")

  hem i nomo kakae yam

  he no longer eats yam

  hem i kakae yam nomo

  he only eats yam

• neva + V : never

  hem i neva kakae yam

  he's never eaten yam

• jes + V : (<"just") an action that has recently occurred

  mifala i jes wekap

  we just woke up

• In a future context, jes entails a delay, rendered in English as "eventually":

  bae mi pem

  I will buy it / Let me buy it

  bae mi jes pem, be noyet

  I will buy it (eventually), but not yet

• V + gogo : continued action

  hem i kukum kumala gogo

  he keeps on cooking sweet potatoes

• mas + V : "must", be obliged to

  hem i mas kakae

  he must eat

• traem + V : "try to"; also sometimes used for politeness in requests

  hem i stap traem katem

  he's trying to cut it

  traem soem long mi

  could you show it me? (request)

• wantem + V : "want to"

  hem i wantem go long Santo

  she wants to go to Santo

• save + V : be able to, or be in the habit of doing

  mi save rid

  I can read

  mi no save dring suga

  I don't take sugar in drinks

  fish ia i save kilim man

  this fish can kill a person

Some of these markers also have lexical meanings. For example, save can mean "be able to" but it is also a verb "know".

Subordination

• sapos + Clause : if

sapos yumitu faenem pig, bae yumitu kilim i ded

if we find a pig, we'll kill it

Sample texts and media

The Bible

The longest written work in Bislama is the Bible completed in 1998.

Yumi, Yumi, Yumi