A Pacific language researcher says there is a race against time to document creole languages in Melanesia before they evolve or die out.
Research Fellow at the Australian National University, Kirsty Gillespie, is documenting the three distinct Melanesian creoles Bislama from Vanuatu, Tok Pisin from Papua New Guinea and Pijin from Solomon Islands.
Dr Kirsty Gillespie Photo: Supplied
Dr Gillespie said these three languages are not endangered but it is important they are documented before they change.
She said there are a lot of concerns about endangered languages but little focus is given to documenting existing indigenous languages.
"There are still languages with small amount of speakers that haven't been documented at all.
"It's a bit of a race against time to try and focus on those," she said.
"And a lot of linguists are focusing on those undocumented languages for those reasons, because over time, there'll be less and less speakers of those languages."
Many strands to languages
There is a fascinating history behind the creation and evolution of the Melanesian Creoles which extend back to their first interactions with explorers, early traders, missionaries and more recently as Dr Gillespie pointed out their colonisers.
"Melanesian Pidgin is born of colonial interactions between predominantly English speakers, but speakers of German and in Vanuatu, speakers of French, interacting with islanders speaking the local languages and finding something in between.
"So many of the words might come from English, but they changed in a way to be used within the Creole language.
"And the structure of the language can often reflect more of the local languages side. It's a real mix of English, some German, some French, some Malay even different languages that have interacted with those particular countries, often in an employment context."
