Returning labourers took Bislama back to Vanuatu, where it evolved from a simplified pidgin into a fully-fledged language, and was used wherever people with different native tongues need to communicate. The new form of speech was known as "Bislama" from the French bêche-de-mer, meaning "sea cucumber", which was an important export from the South Pacific at that time. This was based partly on the 'South Sea jargon' used by early sailors. There, islanders who spoke different native languages needed a way to communicate with one another and with their English-speaking masters, and a simple pidgin language developed as a result.
In the late 19th-century, labourers from Vanuatu and other parts of Melanesia were taken to work on sugar cane plantations in Queensland and Fiji. Colonialism exacerbated the islanders' difficulty in understanding one another, since Vanuatu was ruled jointly by the UK and France, and was given a dual education system - which persists to this day - in which some schoolchildren are educated in English and others in French. In Vanuatu, over a hundred distinct languages are spoken in a country with a population no greater than that of a large English town - virtually every group of villages has its own language. Their vocabulary of these languages is based on English, but in their sounds and grammar they incorporate many features of native Melanesian languages. Bislama, the form of pidgin English dealt with in this guide, is the national language of Vanuatu in the South Pacific, and related forms of pidgin are spoken in the neighbouring countries of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Pidgin English is regarded by many as a bit of a joke, but it is in fact the main language of three countries. Some of these pidgins later evolved into sophisticated, fully-developed languages (these are technically known as 'creoles', although the term 'pidgin' has persisted). Pidgins are highly simplified forms of a language that originally arose where people with no common language came into contact with one another and were forced to communicate. How to speak Bislama (Vanuatu Pidgin English) What is pidgin English? Pidginise Your English - Learn Bislama, Vanuatu's national language
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