The Tok Pisin is a Creole language with vocabulary based on English [ 1 ] spoken by about four million people, including half a million as a native. [ 2 ] The word “tok pisin” comes from tok , which means “conversation” (from English talk ), and pisin , which means pidgin (from the Chinese form of business English ).
Despite its suggestive name, Tok Pisin is not a Creole in itself, but one of Papua New Guinea’s official languages , along with English and Hiri Motu , as well as being the most widely spoken in the country. [ 1 ] It is used in the media and in government, although less than English. Certain basic schools teach through that language.
In most verbs the transitivity is marked by the suffix im . Times are indicated by separate words: bai (future), bin (past, comes from english been ), stap (present action, comes from stop ), i (continued action), pinis (complete action, comes from finish ). Already the nouns do not vary in number, while the adjectives have the suffix for and can be used as adverbs. Pela also indicates the plural in pronouns, which vary in person and number, and may present, depending on the region, the forms: double, triple and plural. For this reason, reduplication is widely used in Tok Pisin as a derivation or simply in words that exist.
As in the Bislama language, two prepositions are used: bilong for “from” (possession) or “para” (objective) and long for all other meanings.
