(Untitled)

[notyourbroom]

Tok Pisin is an interesting language. Take the following article on Canada:
Kanada i wanpela kantri bilong Not Amerika.
Canada is one-fellow country (that) belongs (to) North America.
or, on Saturday:
Sarere i nambasikis de bilong wik

Comments

[nekokaze]

Just a head's up: there's only been like one really fluent speaker on the Tok Pisin wiki ever (at last count) so it's kinda a weird version of the language in some ways. It's generally good textbook TP usually, though.

Also, I'm pretty sure the origin of the predicate marker i is either "he" or something native, though I can't remember at the moment (usually a big deal is made out of its roles in the aspectual system and such, not what it came from). I should probably look it up, I haven't been on a Tok Pisin kick in about 8 months now, it's time.

(Man, my language contact paper from Linguistics on TP sounds weird. I mean, it's good stuff, but whenever you come back to a paper after a while it's crazy.)

[nekokaze]

Ah, wait, I did include that in my paper, I remembered right:
...Certain English words became grammaticalized or further extended in grammatical function (long (. ...

[notyourbroom]

Yeah, I couldn't quite remember whether "i" came from "he", though I pondered over it for a moment; considering the function of the word, though, it really acts analogous to a copulative in the above instances, so 'is' works well enough for the purpose of Unscientific LiveJournal Glosses™.

[notyourbroom]

ahaha, terrible pun waiting to happen in a sort of "I can't read without my glosses" thing.

[barroomeyes]

hello. i just started a community for pictures of shapes in the clouds. i did a search for "cloud shapes," and your journal popped up. i was wondering if you'd like to join? membership is open to everyone :-)

cloudyshapes