Over the past century or so, Bislama has evolved to what is currently spoken and written. Besides Bislama, most ni-Vanuatu also know their local language, the local language of their father and that of their mother, and their spouse, and formal schools are taught in English or in French. This is how Bislama was born, progressively evolving separately from other related pidgins from the Pacific.īecause 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 alingua franca for communication between ni-Vanuatu, as well as with and even between foreigners. This pidgin started spreading over the Vanuatu archipelago at the turn of the 20th century, as the survivors of Blackbirding began to come back to their native islands: knowledge of this pidgin would facilitate communication not only with European traders and settlers, but also between native populations of remote islands within the archipelago. This early plantation pidgin is the origin not only of Bislama, but also of Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea and Pijin of the Solomon Islands, though not of Torres Strait Creole north of Australia. With several languages being spoken in these plantations, a pidgin was formed, combining English vocabulary with grammatical structures typical of languages in the region. Historyĭuring the period known as Blackbirding, in the 1870s and 1880s, hundreds of thousands of Pacific islanders (many of them from the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) archipelago) were enslaved and forced to work on plantations, mainly in Queensland, Australia and Fiji. Bislama can be basically described as a language with an English vocabulary and phonology and anOceanic grammar. While the influence of these vernacular languages is low on the vocabulary side, it is very high in the morphosyntax. More than 95% of Bislama words are of English origin the remainder combines a few dozen words from French, as well as some vocabulary inherited from various languages of Vanuatu, essentially limited to flora and fauna terminology. «Yumi, Yumi, Yumi», the Vanuatu national anthem, is in Bislama. It is the first language of many of the «Urban ni-Vanuatu» (those who live in Port Vila and Luganville), and the second language of much of the rest of the country’s residents. Become a member of at justīislama ( English /ˈbɪsləmɑː/ Bislama: also known under its earlier name in French Bichelamar ) is a creole language, one of the official languages of Vanuatu.
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