Bislama ( ;
More than 95% of Bislama words are of English origin, whilst the remainder comprises a few dozen words from French as well as some specific vocabulary inherited from various languages of Vanuatu—although these are essentially limited to flora and fauna terminology.[See Charpentier (1979).] While the influence of these vernacular languages is low on the vocabulary side, it is very high in the morphosyntax. As such, Bislama can be described simply as a language with an English vocabulary and an Oceanic grammar and phonology.[See Camden (1979).]
Scholars highlight the role of Bislama in undermining the vitality of Vanuatu's indigenous languages.[François (2012: 103 ff.); Lavender Forsyth (2025).]
History
During the period of "
blackbirding" in the 1870s and 1880s, hundreds of thousands of Pacific islanders (many of them from the
New Hebrides – now the
Vanuatu archipelago) were taken as indentured labourers, often kidnapped, and forced to work on plantations, mainly in Queensland, Australia, and
Fiji.
[Emma Christopher, Cassandra Pybus and Marcus Buford Rediker (2007). Many Middle Passages: Forced Migration and the Making of the Modern World, University of California Press, pp 188–190. .] With several languages being spoken in these plantations a localised
pidgin was formed, combining English vocabulary with grammatical structures typical of languages in the region.
[For this whole section, see: Tryon & Charpentier (2004), and Crowley (1990).] This early plantation pidgin is the origin not only of Bislama, but also of
Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea, and
Pijin of the
Solomon Islands; though not of Torres Strait Creole in the north of Australia.
This creole started spreading throughout the Vanuatu archipelago at the turn of the 20th century, as former blackbirds and their descendants began to return to their native islands. Knowledge of this creole would facilitate communication not only with European traders and settlers, but also between native populations, and because Vanuatu is the most language-dense country in the world (one count puts it at 113 languages for a population of 225,000),[See Crowley (2000:50); François (2012:86).] Bislama usefully serves as a lingua franca for communication between ni-Vanuatu, as well as with and between foreigners. Although it has been primarily a spoken-only language for most of its history, the first dictionary of Bislama was published in 1977.[See Crowley (1995).] This, along with its second edition in 2004, has helped to create a standardised and uniform spelling of written Bislama.
Besides Bislama, most ni-Vanuatu also know their local language, the local language of their father and/or mother, as well as their spouse, oftentimes. The country's official languages of tuition in schools and educational institutions are English and French.
Name
The name of Bislama (also referred to, especially in French, as
Bichelamar) comes via the early 19th century word
Beach-la-Mar from pseudo-French
biche de mer or
bêche de mer,
Holothuroidea, which itself comes from an alteration of the Portuguese bicho do mar "sea animal".
In the early 1840s, sea cucumbers were also
harvested and dried at the same time that
sandalwood was gathered. The names
biche-la-mar and
Sandalwood English came to be associated with the kind of pidgin that came to be used by the local laborers between themselves, as well as their English-speaking overseers.
[See Crowley (1990).]
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in an account of his travels through the Pacific in 1888 and 1889, "the natives themselves have often scraped up a little English ... or an efficient pidgin, what is called to the westward Beach-la-Mar."
Today, the word bislama itself is seldom used by speakers of Bislama to refer to sea cucumbers, as a new re-borrowing from pseudo-French bêche de mer, which has taken the form besdemea, has become more popular.
Dialectal variations
Dialects exist, based mainly on different pronunciations in different areas which stem from the different sounds of the native languages. The future tense marker can be heard to be said as: Bambae, Mbae, Nambae, or Bae. There are also preferences for using Bislama or native words that vary from place to place, and most people insert English, French, or local language words to fill out Bislama. So in the capital city it is common to hear 'computer'; in other places one might hear 'ordinateur'.
Pacific creole comparison
|
| ane / ne / an / a |
| dha / dhemtu / dhem |
| dhis __ (ia) / dhemtu __ ia / dhem __ ia |
| em |
| po |
-Ø when attributive (em i big man 'he's a big man')
-wan when predicative (man i big wan 'the man's big') |
| uman / (dialect difference) |
Orthography
The Bislama Latin alphabet uses the letters
A, B, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U, V, W, Y and the digraphs
AE,
AO and
Velar nasal.
An older Latin orthography, used before 1995, had É (now written E), AI and AU (now AE and AO). For those vowels in hiatus, AÏ and AÜ were used (now written AI and AU). Labialization (used in loanwords), now written with a tilde ( M̃ and P̃) or a following W ( MW and PW), were then spelled with a macron, following the conventions used for some vernacular Vanuatu languages: M̄ was used for and P̄ for .
On the island of Pentecost Island, the avoiuli script is sometimes used for Bislama. The shapes of the letters derive from sand-drawing. It has distinct letters for NG and NGG, but otherwise corresponds closely to the Latin alphabet above, though capitals are seldom used, punctuation differs, there are digits for higher numbers and for commonly traded commodities such as pig tusks.
Grammar
Two frequent words in Bislama are "long" and "blong", which take the place of many prepositions in English or French.
"Long"
-
Long as 'next to', 'by', 'beside' etc.
-
;Stoa long haos: The store next to the house.
-
long as 'at' or 'to'
-
;Mi bin stap long ples ia bifo: I have been to this place before.
-
;Mi stap long stoa: I am at the store.
-
long as 'in'
-
;Jea long haos: The chair in the house.
Long holds many other related meanings, and is sometimes used in improvisation.
"Blong"
Originally from the English word "belong",
blong takes the place of 'of' or the genitive case in other languages. Just like
of in English, it is one of the most widely used and versatile words in the language, and can indicate possession, country of origin, defining characteristics, intention, and others.
- Buk blong mi
- The book that belongs to me, my book
- Man blong Amerika
- Man from America, American.
- Hemi woman blong saiens
- She is a woman of science, She is a scientist.
- Man blong dring
- Man of drinking i.e. a drinker
Verbs
Verbs in Bislama usually consist of a stem word (borrowed from English, French or indigenous languages); most
add to this a transitive suffix.
The form of that suffix is /-em/, /-im/, or /-um/, depending on vowel harmony. If the last vowel of the verb'
p. 71
| + Morphology of transitive verb endings
! English !! colspan="2" | Bislama |
|
| dig im |
| klin im |
| kis im |
| put um |
| pul um |
| kuk um |
| wand em |
| har em 'hear, feel' |
| tal em 'tell, say' |
| sal em |
| sar em |
| kas em 'get, reach' |
| kar em 'carry, bring' |
| rer em 'prepare' |
| tek em |
| faen em |
| kol em |
| hol em |
| fol em |
| so em |
| lukaot em 'search' |
| p em 'buy' |
Exceptions exist, such as luk im ("look").
Examples of transitive verbs which exceptionally don't take this suffix include: kakae 'eat, bite'; trink 'drink'; save 'know'; se 'say'.
Verbs do not conjugate. The tense, aspect and mood of a sentence are indicated with markers such as stap, bin and bae that are placed in the sentence.
- Mi stap kakae taro
- I'm eating taro
- Mi bin kakae taro
- I have eaten taro
- Bae mi kakae taro
- I will eat taro
Nouns
The plural is formed by putting
ol before the word. For example,
bia 'beer';
ol bia = "beers".
Ol comes from the English "all". When used with numbers, the singular form is used. 2 bia, 3 bia, etc.
Pronouns
The
of Bislama closely resemble those of
Tok Pisin. They feature four grammatical numbers (singular, dual, trial and plural) and also encode the
clusivity distinction: 1st person non-singular pronouns (equivalent of English
we) are described as
inclusive if they include the addressee (i.e. {you + I}, {you + I + others}), but
exclusive otherwise (i.e. {I + other people}). Bislama pronouns do not
Grammatical case.
| + personal pronouns of Bislama |
|
|
|
|
|
The third person singular hem, also written em lacks gender distinction, so it can mean either he, she or it. The predicate marker i – a particle which is placed before the Verb phrase of a sentence – is sometimes merged with the third person pronoun, giving the words hemi and emi, respectively, in singular, and oli
p. 11-13, 49 and 57
Tense/aspect/mood markers
-
stap + V : (progressive) ongoing or habitual action
-
;hem i stap kukum kumala: or:
- ;hemi stap kukum kumala: he/she is cooking sweet potatoes
-
bin + V : past tense (with implication that the state is no longer true)
-
;hem i bin sik long fiva: she was sick with fever but
-
V + finis : (perfective) "already" (when placed at the end of a phrase; elsewhere it means "finish")
-
;hem i kakae finis: she has already eaten
-
bae + V (occasionally bambae): (irrealis) future or hypothetical actions (though, like in English, generally not used in conditional sentences)
-
;bae mi go long Santo: I will go to Santo
-
;: If the plane hadn't been full, I would have gone to Santo
-
no + V : negative, "not"
-
;hem i no wantem yam: he doesn't want yam
-
nomo + V: "no longer" (when placed after the predicate; elsewhere it means "only")
-
;hem i nomo kakae yam: he no longer eats yam
-
;hem i kakae yam nomo: he only eats yam
-
neva + V : never
-
;hem i neva kakae yam: he's never eaten yam
-
jes + V : (<"just") an action that has recently occurred
-
;: we just woke up
-
In a future context, jes entails a delay, rendered in English as "eventually":
-
;bae mi pem: I will buy it / Let me buy it
-
;bae mi jes pem, be noyet: I will buy it (eventually), but not yet
-
V + gogo : continued action
-
;hem i kukum kumala gogo: he keeps on cooking sweet potatoes
-
mas + V : "must", be obliged to
-
;hem i mas kakae: he must eat
-
traem + V : "try to"; also sometimes used for politeness in requests
-
;hem i stap traem katem: he's trying to cut it
-
;traem soem long mi: could you show it me? (request)
-
wantem + V : "want to"
-
;hem i wantem go long Santo: she wants to go to Santo
-
save + V : be able to, or be in the habit of doing
-
;mi save rid: I can read
-
;mi no save dring suga: I don't take sugar in drinks
-
;fish ia i save kilim man: this fish can kill a person
Some of these markers also have lexical meanings. For example, save can mean "be able to" but it is also a verb "know".
Subordination
- if we find a pig, we'll kill it
Sample texts and media
The Bible
The longest written work in Bislama is the
Bible completed in 1998.
|
| Luke 2:6–7: |
| Bislama: |
| "Tufala i stap yet long Betlehem, nao i kam kasem stret taem blong Meri i bonem pikinini. Nao hem i bonem fasbon pikinini blong hem we hem i boe. Hem i kavremap gud long kaliko, nao i putum hem i slip long wan bokis we oltaim ol man ol i stap putum gras long hem, blong ol anamol ol i kakae. Tufala i mekem olsem, from we long hotel, i no gat ples blong tufala i stap." |
| English: |
| While they were still in Bethlehem, the time came for Mary to give birth. Then she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger (lit. " a certain kind of box where people used to put hay for animals to eat"). They did so, because there was no room in the inn for them to stay. |
Yumi, Yumi, Yumi
|
| Bislama words
CHORUS:
Yumi, Yumi, yumi i glad long talem se
Yumi, yumi, yumi ol man blong Vanuatu
God i givim ples ya long yumi,
Yumi glat tumas long hem,
Yumi strong mo yumi fri long hem,
Yumi brata evriwan!
CHORUS
Plante fasin blong bifo i stap,
Plante fasin blong tedei,
Be yumi i olsem wan nomo,
Hemia fasin blong yumi!
CHORUS
Yumi save plante wok i stap,
Long ol aelan blong yumi,
God i helpem yumi evriwan,
Hem i papa blong yumi.
CHORUS | English translation
CHORUS:
We are, we are, we are happy to proclaim
We are, we are, we are the people of Vanuatu!
God has given us this land;
We are grateful for it,
We are strong, we are free in this land;
We are all brothers!
CHORUS
We have many traditions
And also many modern ways,
But we are all one
And this is who we are.
CHORUS
We know there is much work to be done
On all our islands.
God helps all of us,
He is our Father.
CHORUS
|
Further reading
External links
