Subject: Re: Tok Pisin

From: Jean-Joseph Cote <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2003 09:10:34 -0400

Pierre wrote:
> I just got on a tok Pisin mailing list.

It's 2003.  By this point, every bizarre thing imaginable exists.  Is
this the only place where it exists as a written language?

> May I quote the instructions for "darapti" to it?

Well, considering you wrote them, I can't imagine why not.  Let us know
what the pigeon talkers think.

Jean-Joseph

For those who may not remember this, back in November of '99, Pierre was
the wordmeister for a round where the word was "darapti".  When he sent
out the definitions, the instructions for the round were entirely in a
language called Tok Pisin, which is spoken in Papua New Guinea, with no
translation into English.  Apparently everyone was able to decode it well
enough, or else the instructions didn't matter, because everyone knows
the rules.  Don't confuse Tok Pisin with the language used in Pierre's
signature; that's Lojban, which I gather is a completely synthetic
language that's supposed to eliminate all ambiguity in communication. 
This is what the Tok Pisin message said:

Subject: Ol darapti i kam

I gat hia wanpela ten tri mining bilong tok "darapti". Yu ken putim
wanpela vot
long wanpela mining na tupela vot long narapela mining. Sevenpela de bai
i kam,
na mi kaunim ol vot na telim yupela, wanem mining i winim ol arapela, na
wanem
i as tru bilong dispela tok.

Sapos yu vot long mining tru, orait yu gat poin. Sapos yu vot long mining
bilong
yu yet, orait yu lusim faipela poin. Sapos yu tokim, "Em i raitim dispela
mining," na yu tok tru, mi brukim wanpela poin long tenpela hap na givim
wanpela
long yu. Yu tok giaman, orait yu lusim wanpela hap.

---

From: Pierre Abbat <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 21:01:45 -0400

> what the pigeon talkers think.

I got a response from a tok Pisin speaker. He found two things wrong: "kaunim 
ol vot na telim yupela" should be "kaunim ol vot na tokim yupela", and "Sapos 
yu tokim" should be "Sapos yu tok". Considering that he has over 35 years of 
experience with the language, and I spent only a month learning it, he was 
quite impressed.

phma