Tok Pisin and English in contact

Tok Pisin and English are now in fairly intensive contact for many Papua New Guineans, especially those who are growing up speaking Tok Pisin as a first or primary language and are receiving education through the medium of English. In principal, the education system is English-medium in most government educational institutions from grade one to the end of tertiary, but in practice, a fair amount of Tok Pisin may be used. Nevertheless, many young people grow up familiar with both languages.

In a situation such as this, the question is whether a post-creole continuum is likely to develop, as has happened in other societies such as Guyana and Jamaica. A number of researchers have given indications that a post-creole continuum may be developing or may already be in place, but Siegel (1997), reviewing the available evidence, shows that the current situation falls far short of an established continuum. Smith (2002) also reviews the evidence and comes to broadly the same conclusion. Nevertheless, there is a good deal of mutual influence between the two languages in Papua New Guinea today. Many young people familiar with English engage in code-switching, where discrete chunks of English are used in discourse, and code-mixing, where elements from English are mixed in. Many English verbs, for example, are incorporated into Tok Pisin and integrated by adding the transitivizing marker -im. In some cases the phonology of the English word is retained intact, while in other cases, there is adaptation to the phonology of Tok Pisin. The future extent and direction of this contact is not known at present. Much will depend on language and education policy decisions, but there is the distinct possibility that the two phonological systems may come to have an increasingly intimate relationship.