“PIDGIN ENGLISH”

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 3275, 14 June 1943, Page 5

“PIDGIN ENGLISH”

LINGUISTIC INGENUITY USED BY. ISLAND NATIVES INSTANCES QUOTED IN PAEROA A number of quoted examples of “pidgin English” as used by the natives of New Guinea, and of the Bougainville-Buka group in the Solomon Islands, provoked merriment during the hearing of an address recently given in Paeroa by th Rev. A. H. Vox ce, who for 16 years has been a Methodist missionary in the Islands. It was stated by Mr Voyce that .“pidgin English” is a normal means of spoken communication between lepresentatives of the administrative and trading interests and the natives of the Mandated Territory m the New Guinea group of islands in the south-west Pacific.

Here are a few of the “pidgin English” equivalents of English words and ideas: —

Aeroplane: “Fly-ship canoe,’ or “fly-ship belong sky.” Motor car: “Fly-ship belong ground.” Bicycle: “W(h)eely w(h)eel,” which is a kind of generic term for things that rotate, including egg-beaters, rolling-pins, sewing-machines and mincers. In describing a tandem bicycle the resources of “pidgin English” are literally drawn upon. To the native it is a “w(h)eely w(h)eely belong two fella; he sit down one time.” The rotary motion is also associated with a giddy turn, which the New Guinea native describes ■in this way:—“Eye belong me ’e round,” his* way of saying that things about him seem to be going round. A desire for repose is indicated thus:—“eye belong me ’e like sleep.” Perspiration: “Water ’e come' up along skin belong me.” To tremble or have a flit of the shivers is picturesquely and rather aptly depicted: “Skin belong me ’e guria”: guria is the native word for earthquake. • '

To tell the truth is to “talk true on top” and when the European magistrate or administrator administers the oath in court, in native cases, he does it by firmly admonishing the witness to “talk true too much on top,” meaning he must tell “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

If a native is hungry he announces the. fact in this manner: “Bell’ belong me he cry out along kai-kai.” If he has eaten to his satisfaction (and perhaps repletion), he says, “bell’ belong me ’e full up; ’e finish.’

All women, to the native, are comprehended in the descriptive appellation “missis.” A single lady is thus tersely described “misses ’e no got man.”

Alluding to the contracting, parties in polygamous marriage a native wifi say: “This fella man ’e got two (or more as the case may be) fella

mary.’ “Master” is the term' applied in general to men of another race; and as “grass” is the native word for hair a grey or white-haired man is alluded to as “master white grass.”

One who wears glasses comes under the category: “’E got glass along eye belong him.”

But the masterpiece of all the examples of “pidgin English” quoted by the missionary was undoubtedly the effort of a native in describing a cross-cut saw. Here linguistic ingenuity is apparently taxed t.o the utmost in the attempt to picture the procedure of the man at the other end of the -saw: “One fella something (thing), you push ’im ’e come, you pull ’im ’e go; ’e kai-kai ’im diwai (wood); ’e all the same akis (axe); das all ’e no- akis; ’e brother belong ’im; ’e saw.” Which, being interpreted, is to say, “Something you push and you pull; it cuts the wood; it is just like an axe but it isn’t an axe; it’s his brother the saw.”