- Official language in
- Vanuatu
- Script
- Latin
- Speakers
- 218K (2009)
Where it's spoken
Bislama is the national language of the Republic of Vanuatu; the Constitution names Bislama, English and French as the country's official languages, and English and French as the principal languages of education. It functions as a lingua franca among Vanuatu's islands and is described as the default way that people from different islands communicate with each other. Most of the population of Vanuatu has some fluency in Bislama, and for most speakers it remains a second language alongside one of Vanuatu's many other local languages, though it is increasingly used as a first language in urban centers such as Port Vila and Luganville.
Sources
- Government of Vanuatu, Language Services Department, Ministry of the Prime Minister — "The National Language Policy of the Republic of Vanuatu" (Version 01, November 2020) — Infographic "National and official languages", quoting Article 3 of the Constitution
- "Vanuatu's Constitution of 1980 with Amendments through 2013" (Constitute Project) — p.5, Art. 3 "National and Official Languages"
- Meyerhoff, Miriam. "Survey chapter: Bislama." APiCS Online: Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology — §1 Introduction; §3 Sociolinguistic situation
- Versteegh, Kees (2006). Review of Terry Crowley, "Bislama Reference Grammar" (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004). Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 162(4), 572–575 — Second language for most inhabitants; national language
Script & pronunciation
Bislama is written with the Latin alphabet, as shown by every word in this app's cards and in academic descriptions of the language such as mi, yu and blong. There is no single standardized spelling: a standard orthography proposed by the Vanuatu Literacy Council in the late twentieth century was not widely adopted, and while the spelling used by Bislama's Bible translators is described as effectively the only written standard, how Bislama is written and spoken still varies considerably. The Government of Vanuatu has also published a Bislama Spelling Dictionary of Bislama words as a spelling reference. Bislama's orthography has been described as roughly phonemic, and in this app's cards the romanization field often simply divides the same word into syllables with hyphens, as in Halo → Ha-lo and Tangkiu tumas → Tang-kiu tu-mas.
Sources
- Meyerhoff, Miriam. "Survey chapter: Bislama." APiCS Online: Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology — §3 Sociolinguistic situation; §4 Phonology (orthography)
- Government of Vanuatu (Vanuatu Institute of Technology / TVET Sector Strengthening Project, supported by the Vanuatu National Language Council) — "Bislama Spelling Dictionary" (2007) — Dictionary overview page
Grammar essentials
Bislama's basic word order in main and subordinate clauses is subject–verb–object. Before the verb, third-person subjects take the predicate marker i (singular) or oli (plural), while first- and second-person subjects such as mi ("I") and yu ("you") take no such marker: in this app's card "Mi gat wan buking. Nem blong mi i Smith." ("I have a reservation. My name is Smith."), i appears after the third-person subject nem blong mi ("my name") but not after mi. Negation places no directly before the verb, as in this app's cards "Kad blong mi i no wok." ("My card is not working.") and "Mi no save" ("I don't understand / I don't know"). Possession is expressed with the preposition blong placed after the noun it belongs to, as in nem blong mi ("my name") and kad blong mi ("my card") from the same cards. The particle bae marks future or modal meaning and is placed before the subject and verb, as in this app's card "Bae mi luk rum fastaem?" ("Can I see the room first?"). The pronoun yumi is an inclusive "we" that includes the person being addressed, unlike mi and mifala; this app's card "Yumi mas stap long kontakt." ("We must stay in contact.") uses it that way.
Sources
- Meyerhoff, Miriam. "Survey chapter: Bislama." APiCS Online: Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology — §5 Noun phrase; §6.1 Verbal auxiliaries; §7 Simple sentences
- Versteegh, Kees (2006). Review of Terry Crowley, "Bislama Reference Grammar" (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004). Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 162(4), 572–575 — p.112: mi/yu take no predicate marker (citing Crowley 2004)
- United States Peace Corps — "Bislama Handbook" (Revision, July 2011), hosted by Live Lingua — Unit 8, Pronoun Forms, p.49: inclusive yumi vs. mi/mifala
Politeness & etiquette
Bislama has a small set of verbs that combine directly with a main verb to add meanings such as desire, inception, or direction, and one of them, traem ("try"), functions to soften a request into something closer to "please." This app's card "Traem daonlodem" ("Please try downloading it") uses traem the same way, with "please" carrying the English translation.