Talk:Tok Pisin

message: I first encountered this language in the 1980s upon reading James Blish's novel The Night Shapes (1962), set in early-1900s Africa. As example, the narrator, to say, "I wish to speak to the man in charge" said "mi spik bigfella," which at the time deeply impressed me with its concision. After that, I was fascinated with "trade pidgin," and it was only after the Wkkipedia arose that I found the "tok pisin" concept.
What dismays me in this article is the apparent tone-deafness of the various editors. Look to the lede grafs: the point is largely missed that "tok pisin" is a VERY simple transliteration of the term "talk business" — "business speak" or rather "trade speech." 
Almost all verbiage derives from colloquial English, when heard rather than read. For instance, "I would like toothpastae" is "Mi laikim sop bilong tit" — "Me like'm soap belong teeth," that is to say "I would like (to have) (the) soap for (my) teeth." Conversely, "I don't speak pidgin well" = "Mi no save gut long tok pisin" ("long" = "along," so you have "me no savvy (understand) good along with trade-speak").
Though the article makes the case that it's a primary language of Papua New Guinea and used by "[p]erhaps one million people," the language has been deprecated by the Wikipedia community and hundreds of articles blanked, yet we somehow still have Esperanto, an entirely artificial language. Please don't get me wrong: I have studied Esperanto since 1974, but tok pisin is an ACTIVE language used on a daily basis, something Esperanto cannot claim.Weeb Dingle (talk) 05:10, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  save the pidgin 

message: the "Development of Tok Pisin" section is a bit weak, and a lot of the references are not in wikipedia format. I don't know if this means it's an inexperienced editor or copy pasted plagiarism? i'm currently watching this youtube: Langfocus, and it has some interesting history, i know youtube isn't the most highbrow source, but it's a start.
Irtapil (talk) 17:06, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Development of Tok Pisin 

message: I just removed the pronunciation [ˌtok piˈsin] from the article because it was not supported by a complete citation to any source, and I am not sure whether the stress on the final syllable is correct. Smith says that per Wurm (1985), "stress is normally on the first syllable" and "stress patterns more closely resembl[e] those of English among speakers more familiar with English" (page 201). So stress on the second syllable of [piˈsin] would be surprising as it doesn't match either the normal rule for Tok Pisin or the stress pattern of the English source word pidgin. Thus, I don't think we should present this stress pattern unless it can be verified.I haven't seen the stress of this word given in any articles or dictionaries I have looked at so far.  I am curious if anyone has ideas for how to better confirm the correct local pronunciation. @Womtelo, I think you may have been the first to add this pronunciation to the article with this edit here; can you clarify whether that was based on personal experience with the language, or on some source that you remember? Urszag (talk) 05:42, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I looked a little further and found the following observations about accent in John W. M. Verhaar's "Toward a Reference Grammar of Tok Pisin: An Experiment in Corpus Linguistics" (1995): "Tok Pisin compounds have the accent on the NI component" as a general rule, but may have "even stress" (page 296); Verhaar categorizes "tok pisin" as a compound of the form "Extensive Core + NI" (pages 284, 287). This confirms at least that the primary stress is expected to fall on one of the two syllables of Pisin. I tried to find videos on Youtube containing the name of the language, but didn't always find it easy to tell which of the two vowels in [pisin] should be transcribed with greater stress: I'm not sure whether as an English speaker, I might mishear the use of an unreduced vowel in the second syllable as involving an actually nonexistent stress. That's why I think we need a reliable source to tell us what the right analysis is. I'm wondering though whether [tokpisin], with stress marks omitted, could be an acceptable transcription to use if we can't find a source that gives stress information.--Urszag (talk) 06:28, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: hi , I have heard  from native speakers of the language. However, there is apparently variation about which syllable is stressed;  and stress is non-contrastive anyway. So I like your idea of restoring the segmental transcription, but without stress. My main reason for adding the pronunciation (back in 2009!) was mainly to make it clear that the English pronunciation did not reflect the actual autonym.  I'll go ahead and restore the pronunciation tip, as per your suggested solution. Best -- Womtelo (talk) 12:19, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation of "Tok Pisin" in Tok Pisin 

message: The sources for "Hymes 1971b", "Mühlhäusler 1984", "Mühlhäusler 1991", and "Romaine 1991" are missing. They either need to be provided, or any statements sourced to them removed as uncited. DuncanHill (talk) 19:04, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing sources