Torres Strait Creole


Torres Strait Creole is an English-based creole language spoken on several Torres Strait Islands, Northern Cape York and South-Western Coastal Papua. It has approximately 25,000 mother-tongue and bi/tri-lingual speakers, as well as several second/third-language speakers. It is widely used as a language of trade and commerce.
Torres Strait Creole has six main dialects: Papuan, Western-Central, TI, Malay, Eastern, and Cape York. Its main characteristics show that it is a Pacific Pidgin, but the future in X go VERB aligns it with Atlantic Creoles. Related languages are Pijin of the Solomon Islands, Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea, and Bislama of Vanuatu. The other creoles of Australia are more distantly related, being descendants of the Pidgin English that developed in and around Sydney after the colonisation of Australia.

History

Records of pidgin English being used in Torres Strait exist from as early as the 1840s, and therefore Torres Strait Creole may very well be as old as, if not older, than its sister languages, and not a descendant of any of these. The main importers of the pidgin were British and other sailors, many of whom were South Sea Islanders, both Melanesian and Polynesian, as well as Island South-East Asians, Jamaicans, Cantonese Chinese, Japanese, and others. Therefore, Torres Strait Creole has various characteristics of these different types of Pidgin, the main ones being mid- to late 1800s Malay-area Pidgin English, Pacific Pidgin and Jamaican Patois. It may have creolised quite early on Darnley Island, and somewhat later at St Pauls on Moa and on Yorke Island in the Central Islands. Creolisation is post-1960s elsewhere.
The Papuan dialect was replaced by Hiri Motu in many parts of its former territory, which in turn is being replaced by Tok Pisin.

Dialects

s differ mainly from the influences in the various areas the language is spoken or by the language of the ethnic groups that use the language as well as a certain amount of superstrata influence from English. Apart from accent and intonation, differences are mainly vocabulary used for local fauna, flora and so on, retentions from local indigenous languages or other substrata languages and minor differences in pronunciation because of substrata influences.
The dialects group generally into the Western-Central-Cape York dialects where the western and central language of Torres Strait has a strong influence, 'TI' Brokan with a strong Malay/Indonesian-Filipino-European influence, Eastern Brokan with a South Seas and Meriam Mìr influence, and Papuan, with influences from languages such as Agöb, Bine, Gizrra, Wipi, Kiwai, Motu and Tok Pisin. Influences from other languages such as Japanese are to do with vocabulary specific to Japanese items.

Continuum

Torres Strait Creole exists as part of a lect continuum: a local language, a local language mix called Ap-ne-Ap, a pidgin basilect creole, a mesolect English influenced creole, local Torres Strait English, and General Australian English, as this example shows:

Vowels

The language has the following vowels :
FrontCentralBack
Close
Close-mid
Mid
Open-mid
Open

Vowel length for the language as a whole is non-contrastive, though in some subdialects/dialects it appears to be contrastive.

Consonants

The dental-alveolar contrast exists in the Western, Central and Cape York dialects, however only exists in other dialects in so far as either English or Western-Central influences force a contrast, or where the voiced alveolar stop realises as the rhotic tap . In the Papuan dialects, the only alveolar consonant is, while and can be either dental or alveolar, according to local language. In Meriam influenced Broken, is dental, while is alveolar.
The stops,,,, and are aspirated and also have fricative allophones, particularly while and vary in pronunciation when word initial and medial between and, with only appearing at the ends of words in Torres Strait and Papuan dialects. These reflect indigenous language allophony as well as a rationalisation of the larger English consonant phoneme inventory. The consonants,,,,,, and do not have any major allophonic variation, while varies between.

Grammar

Pronouns

The following are the forms of the personal pronouns in the Western-Central-Cape York dialects. Where the Eastern dialect is concerned, the dental-alveolar contrast is on the whole non-operative, and the dual forms are less commonly used than elsewhere. Furthermore, the 1-2 form yumi is often used as the general non-singular 1-2 form; and is sometimes used as such in other dialects in rhetorical discourse. The Central Islands dialect tends to also use wi for the 1st person plural.
number1st person1st-2nd person2nd person3rd person 3rd person
singular subjectai—yuemi
singular non-subject mi———em
dual subjectmituyumiyutudhemtu--
dual object ———dhemtu/-emtu--
plural subjectmiplayumplayupladhemplaòl
plural object ———dhempla/-empladhempla/-empla

The non-identfying 3rd plural òl is also found as a nominal plural marker:
There is a strong tendency for dhiswan and its forms to be used to the exclusion of dhaswan.
Three interrogatives and the two deictics have two forms, this being a reduced clause initial form and a fuller clause final form, and in the case of the deitics, a pre-clitic and independent form, as in the following examples:
Clause position variation
Pre-clitic vs independent form:
Two interrogatives have variant words/forms, used interchangeably:
Dialectal variation is only found in two forms:
The language has no indefinite article, and uses the definite article much less than it is in English, having a more demonstrative feel than the English equivalent. There are singular, dual and plural forms:
The demonstrative articles have a general form, and a specific dual form, as well as variation, with a strong tendency to use the clitics iya and dhea to specify position; the definitie articles are often used with the demonstrative clitics to express the demonstrative articles :
Torres Strait Creole is a somewhat atypical of Pidgin-Creole languages in its word order and various other syntactic properties. Though the normal sentence word order is the expected transitive S-V-O-X and intransitive S-V-X, there is variation in the form of S-X-V, such as where the directional adverbs dhe 'there' and ia/ya 'here' come before the verb, as happens in all local languages.
The four sentences in Torres Strait Creole carry a semantic difference difficult to show in the English translation. Plein i dhe go plai is the basic sentence — 'the plane is flying over there'. Plein i plai dhe go is more along the lines of 'the plane is flying away that way'; plein i plai go dhea is 'the plane is flying away heading that way', and finally plein i dhe plai go is 'the plane is there flying away'.
Unlike Tok Pisin, Bislama and the Australian creoles, -pla is not used as an adjective formant.
When not before the referent, adjectives are often suffixed by -wan, the adjective nominaliser, or by an appropriate nominal, such as man 'man, person'

Transitivity and Voice

Verbs can be marked for transitivity and voice, but not person, tense, aspect or mood. Voice marking is for the transitive-passive, and made by suffixing -e to the verb stem when the object follows the verb, and -em when the object is elsewhere in the clause. Note that the suffix -em is of fairly recent development, and is in origin an abbreviation of the verb phrase form VERB-e em, where the cross referencing pronoun em and the suffix have coalesced. All these versions exist in everyday speech. The verb mentioned below is tek 'to take': intransitive-antipassive tek, transitive-passive teke, teki em, tekyem, tekem:
The development of a full passive using this form also exists:
If the verb stem has e or a diphthong, then the transitive suffix is -e; if i or u, then it can become -i, while of the stem contains a or o, the suffix can become -a. One or two others verbs have stem extensions to form the verb from a noun:
Verb stems that end in vowels do not take the suffix, while a few verbs are irregular in not taking the suffix:
  1. Vowel-final stem: lego 'to leave, depart, go off/away, throw, throw at'
  2. * Aka bi lego lo kenu. 'Grandma went off in the canoe'
  3. * Dhem nugud boi bin lego ston pò dhempla. 'The bad boys threw stones at them'
  4. No suffix: luk
  5. * Ai bi luk pisin plai kam. 'I saw a bird flying towards me'.

    Verbs of position and movement

Certain verbs of position and movement are not followed by a preposition in their most normal clause types. These are not to be confused with transitive clauses:
Four derivational suffixes exist which add aspectual meaning to verb stems. Though their origin are English intransitive prepositions, in Torres Strait Creole their status is completely aspectual; they can only be used as suffixes. They are suffixes to the stem of intransitive verbs, and to the full transitive-passive form of transitive verbs. When used as transitive-passive verbs, they also suffix the transitive ending after the suffix. They also derive verbs from other words.

Prepositions

Torres Strait Creole shows strong substrata influence in its use of its prepositions. All local languages are either prepositionless case-marking agglutinative languages, or case-marking agglutinative languages where the case endings have evolved to postposition status, which contrast the following cases to varying extents, but which have little or no number marking on nouns:
They also contrast the following derived forms, which are not case forms in the local languages, but rather nominals:
The use of the prepositions in Torres Strait Creole reflect these cases and nominalisations to a certain extent:
blo — genitive:
We aus blo misnari? Where is the priest’s house?
pò, lo — dative :
Em i bin spik pò em se wesis bl’em pinis kam. She told her her wages had already arrived.
Bos i bi gibi wesis pò/lo mi. The boss gave the wages to me.
prom – ablative:
’San i dhe kam prom Dhaudhai. This one is coming over from Papua.
lo, we, ene — locative, perlative :
Aus blo Ama blo mi i stanap dhe antap lo / we il ananith lo / we big mango dhe antap. My Aunty’s house is up there on the hill underneath the big mango up there.
Yu mas kam wantaim lo mi. You must/have to come with me.
Dhemtu baradha i sidaun ene kenu The two brothers were sitting in the canoe.
lo — instrumental:
Òl man i kate tœtœl lo naip lo bele / lo ath The men cut the turtle with a knife on the bottom shell.
òlsem, waze – similative :
Dhempla lo Mari Ailan i no tòk waze yumpla. The people on Murray Island don’t talk like us.
Em i dhe swim go waze aligeta. He’s swimming away over there like a crocodile.

Syntactic use of the prepositions

The prepositions also have syntactic uses, including the following, where they govern verbs or adjectives:
Blo: obligation
Ai blo go nau I have to go now / I’m supposed to go now.
Pò: a) focus on a goal
Bos i kam pò luk wòk blo yumi. The boss has come to see / look at our work.
b) extra intensity
Dhem pipol blo Saibai i pò dans! The Saibai people can really dance!
Ai pò taiad nau! I’m getting really tired!
Prom: avoidance
Smòl gel i prait prom dog i baite em. The little girl is afraid that the dog will bite her
lo, prom — comparative :
Dhis dhangal ia i mò big prom/lo nadhawan dhea This dugong is bigger than that one.
We: relative clause
Aus we Ama i stap i antap lo il we i gad wan big mango. The house where Aunty lives is on the hill where there is a big mango.
Boi we yumi bin paitem i krai go Ama bl'em. The boy that/who we fought went off crying to his Mum.
Òl pipol we i wande gud wòk i mas lane ingglis Everyone who wants a good job has to learn English.
Waze : in order, so that
Bos i kam waze em i ken luk òl wòk blo yumi. The Boss is coming so that he can see our work.

Vocabulary

The language has vocabulary from various sources, though the dominant source language is English. Here are lists of Non-English words found in Torres Strait Creole:
Kalaw Kawaw Ya: yawo 'goodbye', matha 'only, very', mina 'really, truly', babuk 'crosslegged', aka 'granny', puripuri 'magic action, spells, products, medicines etc.'.
Meriam Mir: baker 'money', watai 'bamboo break-wind fence'.
Austronesian : thalinga 'ear', bala 'brother, male friend', thuba 'coconut toddy', makan 'to eat', dudu 'to sit', kaikai 'to eat', nene 'granny', datho, 'grandfather', thawian 'brother-in-law'.
Portuguese: pikinini child, sabe 'to know, understand, know how to, can'

Sample texts

Brokan i kriol langgus we òl i spikem lo dhem ailan blo Thoris Stret, lo nòthsaid gowe prom Kep Yòk, ausaid lo SauthWessaid blo Papua. I gad samwe waze 25,000 pipol i sabe tòkem waze namba-wan langgus, namba-tu langgus 'ne namba-thri langgus blo dhempla. Òl i yuzem lo plande ples waze langgus blo treiding an pò bai òl samthing. I gad siks kain Brokan: blo Papua, blo Westen-Sentrel, blo Tiai, blo Maleman, blo Esten, blo Kep Yòk. Òl dhem wòd blo em soem dhiskain pò yumpla, waze em i pizin blo Pasipik, dhasòl i gad wanwan thing, òlsem we yumpla spik pò taim we i go kam, yumpla yuzi dhis tòk: X go meke samthing, dhisan i gad rilesen lo Kriol blo Atlantic, blo Zameka.
Thri langgus we i òlsem Brokan i Pijin blo Solomon Ailan, Tok Pisin blo Niu Gini, ane Bislama blo Banuatu.

The Lord's Prayer