Bislama and "Bastard Tongues"

I've been putting off writing about Bislama, the national and unifying language of Vanuatu, until I knew it better (and I had my laptop to type this out on instead of a smartphone). However, I just read a book titled "Bastard Tongues", and while Bislama wasn't mentioned in it, the pidgin and Creole languages it described reminded me of Bislama so I thought I would take a stab at writing briefly about this crazy language. 

I've heard and read that Bislama is a pidgin language, which according to "Bastard Tongues" is defined as "a much reduced form of language used when people speaking in two or more mutually incomprehensible languages have to communicate with each other". This certainly describes how Bislama developed. In the first half of the 19th century, there was contact between Europeans, Polynesians, and ni-Vanuatu in the whaling, sandelwood, and beche-de-mer (sea cucumber) industries. In the late 19th century, ni-Vanuatu worked on sugarcane plantations in Australia as indentured servents. According to "Bislama: An Introduction to the National Language of Vanuatu", over 50,000 ni-Vanuatu worked on plantations in Australia, Fiji, and Samoa from 1863 - 1911. With the workers coming from different islands of Vanuatu, with different languages, and also coming from countries such as the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, the language now known as Bislama (or Tok Pisin in PNG and Pijin in the Solomons) developed. 

In present day Vanuatu, the main reason that a unifying language is needed is because the country has over 100 languages. This number is staggering to me, especially considering the population of only about 220,000 (according to the Peace Corps Vanuatu language training book). I can only assume that the geography of the archipelago is what led to this. From my porch on Ambae, I can see the other two islands that make up the province- Maewo and Pentacost. Dividing the islands is often rough, open water. I can't imagine back in the day that the islands would have much interaction. In my village on Ambae, there are some people from Pentacost. People from Ambae always speak the local Ambae language to each other. The people from Pentacost speak the language of Pentacost to each other. And between the two groups (and with me), everyone speaks Bislama. The ease at which people switch between languages amazes me, especially as I haven't yet started to learn the local Ambae language other than a few words, and I often stumble over my words switching between English and Bislama. I sometimes have to remind myself that when we are speaking Bislama,  we are speaking no ones first language. 

Back to definitions. The definition of a pidgin language goes on to say that it typically had "limited vocabulary  and little if anything in the way of grammar". The vocabulary of Bislama is quite limited (which I'm reminded of every time I want to say that a view is beautiful) and mainly English based. The grammar,  however, is developed, which is where Bislama differs from the definition of a pidgin language. Everything I've read about Bislama  calls it a pidgin language, so I hadn't thought of it as anything else until I read "Bastard Tongues".

Since the vocabulary of Bislama is mainly based off English and is written as it sounds, try reading these sentences! (Translations below)

1. Mi wantem pem sam capsicum.
2. Yu go wea?
3. Mi gat wan garen klosap long haos blong mi.
4. Fulap man i gat sit sit wota. 

Although much of the vocabulary is based off of English, there are some common words that are based off of other languages. What I find interesting about these  words is that many were mentioned in "Bastard Tongues" in Creoles and pidgins across the globe, even though Bislama was never mentioned. Some examples are 'save' meaning 'to know', 'pikinini' meaning 'child", and the use of 'bin' as a past tense marker.

Translations of the sentences above:

1. I want to buy some peppers.
2. Where are you going?
3. I have a garden near my house.
4. A lot of people have diarrhea.

 Although I wasn't a huge fan of the voice of the author throughout "Bastard Tongues", it has really made me think more about the structure of Bislama, its development, and its usage. I'll end with a long quote from the book about language in schools that, while it is talking about Hawaiian in the late 19th century, is something that I now think about when I constantly hear Bislama being spoken in the classrooms, instead of English. 
"Just imagine you're a Hawaiian teacher with a class of mostly Hawaiian children,  and you're trying to teach them geometry. Some bureaucrat in Honolulu has told you that you have to teach it in English,  but hardly any of the kids know any English. You start trying to explain the square of a hypotenuse and you watch their eyes glaze over. So what do you do? You're out in the boonies, there's not an inspector in sight. Do you persevere in English,  or do you switch to Hawaiian?  I mean, get real."