Tok Pisin. History, linguistic development and German influence (PDF)

Essay from the year 2017 in the subject Speech Science / Linguistics, grade: 1,0, Charles University in Prague (Filozofická fakulta), language: English, abstract: This term paper primarily raises the question in what way the German language took influence on Tok Pisin. For this purpose, it is necessary to take a closer look at individual words of Tok Pisin, which is along with English and Hiri Motu one of the three official languages of Papua New Guinea. After giving a definition of the object of investigation, the essay also seeks to provide an insight into the external history of Tok Pisin.

Tok Pisin ("talk pidgin") is widely spoken across Papua New Guinea, whose population, according to the 2015 Census, was 7.5 million. English, the "language of the urban elite", is only used by a small population group. It is a controversial issue, whether Tok Pisin and the other Melanesian Pidigins can be called creole or not. Primarily the fact that Tok Pisin is spoken by thousands of native speakers and has "functions and grammatical features found in typical creoles" makes people categorizing it as a creole. People saying it is still a pidgin stress that more than 90% of its speakers have a different native language background.