Communicating in PNG can be an interesting experience. There are about 820 languages in PNG. Basically, every area has its own language. Some are more related than others. Some language groups have thousands of people in them and other may only have a couple hundred.
Fortunately, there is one language that most people understand, Tok Pisin. It is a really interesting mixture of English, German, some local languages, and little bit from everywhere else. The great thing about tok pisin is that most people know it and you can talk to lost of people. The bad thing about it is it is pretty general so sometimes you have to say whole lot to say very little.
we are starting to become pretty proficient in tok pisin and it has been great to talk about whatever people want, and there are some crazy questions that come up. But, all of our national employees are from the same language area. They all speak a language called Nobnob. They use it all day during work. Sometimes they forget that I’m there and they have to backup and tell me in tok pisin. Because of this they have decided that I need to know Nobnob and they have started teaching me.
I am not the most gifted language learner but I am starting to pickup a little. Now, they speak to me in a mix of tok pisin and tok ples ( local language).
Anyway I thought you might find it interesting to hear some tok pisin so here is a link to an audio tok pisin New Testament. One thing you should know is that Like American English tok pisin has several different regional accents. The one in this recording is quite different from ours so it sounds a little funny to me but at least you can get the idea. Take a little time and find your favorite Bible verse, see if you can hear what they are saying. The arrows offer dropdown menus where you can choose different books, chapters and verses. Have fun.
http://www.joshuaproject.net/nt-audio-player.php?rol3=tpi
matt
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