Port Moresby, New Guinea;
1970

A recently published Pidgin-English phrase book, by a Hungarian linguist who used a Hungarian-English phrase book as model, offers Pidgin phrases for: "I would like to meet one of the rabbis"; "Please give me a pair of warm gloves. I need a lined leather pair"; "I like skating"; "What is the rag content of this bond paper?"

For a conversation with a doctor, it recommends: "What is your fee for a house call?" In ordering a conservative suit, it suggests: Mi laikum kainkain bilas bilong o1 tubuna, which actually means, "I like the kind of decorations worn by the ancestors." In ordering a book for a wife who likes romances, it offers: Meri bilong mi i laikim o1 stori bilong man meri pren wantaim, which means, "My wife likes stories about men and women sleeping together."

Piano, in Pidgin, is piano, not bikpela bokis biling krai taim yu paitum na kikim en (the big fellow cries when you kick him) and helicopter is helicopter, not mixmaster bilong Jesus Christ, though a plausible name for mixmaster might be helikopter bilong misis since helicopters are better known in New Guinea than mixmasters.

Whatever its origins, and these are certainly ancient & complex, Pidgin is today the lingua franca of modern New Guinea. Grammatically simple, it's easy to learn, and though its vocabulary is small, new words are easily added.

Pidgin has proved remarkably efficient in business, government & education. It is not, however, without its critics. Expatriates, especially missionaries, recently blamed a Cargo Cult, a nativistic revival movement, on Pidgin. Both press & radio had given much coverage to an eclipse & some expatriates alleged that a poor translation suggested the eclipse would last two months. Dr. Ralph Bulmer checked press & radio releases and found no such error in translation. Those who fear Cargo Cults blame institutions they dislike. Missionaries, favoring English, don't like the Pidgin press.

Pidgin puts a backspin on many words, thus slowing down information transfer & making communication easier to follow: lakim (like him) instead of simply lak (like); bikpelo (big fellow) instead of simply bik (big). A few suffixes, used repeatedly, provide loose rhymes & rhythms that also aid in communication.

English-speakers often find Pidgin amusing, perhaps because some of its words have a touch of frontier humor: headman is bos boi (boss boy); domestic is monki masta (monkey master). American teen-agers would love it.

Rubbing two languages & two cultures together can sometimes release old perceptions. In a Pidgin translation of Macbeth, Macbeth becomes a Highland chieftain, the witches sorcerers & the English army a punitive patrol. An Australian Broadcasting Corporation news report on fighting in Ulster included the song "The Wearing of the Green," with the explanation, in Pidgin, that green & orange were the emblems of two feuding tribes, that defeated Catholics sought to reclaim land once theirs, etc. - an explanation entirely comprehensible to New Guinea Highlanders.

Ideally, a language is a storage system for the collective experience of the tribe. Every time a speaker plays back that language, he releases a whole charge of ancient perceptions & memories. This involves him in the reality of the whole tribe. Language is a kind of corporate dream: it involves every member of the tribe all of the time in a great echo chamber to which each speaker constantly adds new sound tracks.

Alan Lomax writes: "A musical style is learned as a whole and responded to as a whole ... the very magic of music lies in the fact that its formal elements can conjure up the total musical experience. ... I have been in villages where one or two tunes brought forth the satisfaction that dozens of melodies did in another place, or that a symphony produced in a city audience. ... As soon as the familiar sound pattern is established, he is prepared to laugh, to weep, to dance, to fight, to worship, etc. His heart is opened."

Pidgin offers no such depth. Its words are mostly English, and whatever reflections & resonances these have for English speakers, for Pidgin-speakers they merely designate. This flatness has one advantage, if it can be counted as such: it ignores the past or, in the case of New Guinea, the many pasts stored in 700 languages. This leads to shallowness of expression & thought, and serves to brainwash speakers of their histories. But it may also serve to unite disparate peoples & promote the emergence of a wholly new culture. If such a culture emerges, with Pidgin as its language, Pidgin will become a true language, which is always something more than communication.