This is the first in our series of Indigenous languages. For API (Asian-Pacific Islander) Month, we start in Melanesia with the Creole language Bislama.
Bislama, also known as Bichelamar in French, arose via the Blackbirding trades of the mid to late 1800s in Oceania.
This period of human trafficking and enslavement of numerous Melanesian peoples led to the creation of a variety of Creole languages spoken throughout Melanesia, Bislama being one of them. (Others being Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea, Pijin in the Solomon Islands and Yumplatok in the Torres Strait Islands.)
Bislama was originally developed and spoken by enslaved Melanesians on the Sugar plantations of Northern Australia and throughout Oceania. In the late 1800s/early 1900s at the advent of the "White Australia" policies, numerous Melanesian descendant laborers were deported to Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands despite being stolen a half century before. This lead to Bislama being spread throughout Vanuatu as descendants returned to their homelands. Soon after Bislama was adopted as a Lingua Franca by ni-Vanuatu or the Vanuatu people. This helped in organization and communication as Vanuatu's indigenous non-Creole languages number in the 100s, being one of the most language dense places in the world.
Bislama is spoken as a first language by many urban ni-Vanuatu people while it is spoken as a second language by many rural ni-Vanuatu people complimentary to their own Indigenous language.
~10,000 1st language speakers
~200,000 second language speakers
As a language, Bislama is an English-Based Creole. With a majority of its lexicon being derived from English and its grammar being distinctly Melanesian.
Distinct features of Bislama include:
The use of "long" and "blong" in place of standard English prepositions.
Long replacing: "next to", "beside" and "by" as well as "at", "to", and "in".
Example: Mi stap long stoa. Translation: I am at the store.
Blong replacing "of". This is a very important and widely used word in Bislama as it indicates "belonging" and can indicate a wide variety of things.
Example: Buk blong mi. Translation: "The book that belongs to me."
Example: Man blong Amerika. Translation: "Man from America/American."
Plurals: Plural nouns in Bislama are created by placing the word "ol" at the front of a word rather than the plural suffix "-s".
Example: ol buk Translation: "books"
"Ol" is derived from the word "all".
For more information on Bislama, check out these videos below.
Also, FYI: This Blog ABSOLUTELY considers Creole languages and even variant Vernacular forms (AAVE, Black British English, Aboriginal Australian English, etc.) of colonizer languages as Indigenous languages. It is not the fault of the enslaved and the colonized that their connections to their mother languages were wiped out.
This one is a presentation from a White woman presenting on the language after visiting and living in Vanuatu for a time. Warning: though she gives a pretty decent presentation in terms of explaining the basics, it is uncomfortable to hear the audience laugh at some of the phrases she presents. Like many Black English-Based Creoles, Bislama is seen and degraded as a "broken English" by Colonizers. There's a whole discussion that can be had on Colonizers discussing and educating on Indigenous languages (including Black Creole languages) to other Colonizers.
Here is a great video demonstrating the use of language as a means of including Indigenous peoples holistically in projects, especially those involving climate change and conservation. The REDD+ initiative is a project aiming to reduce deforestation in the Global South. As a whole this project is not without drawbacks or complications as an UN initiative and there's a lot to be said on how the UN ultimately fails miserably when it comes to confronting the effects of Colonizers on the Colonized.
