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42-431: More than 95% of Bislama words are of English origin, whilst the remainder comprises a few dozen words from French as well as some specific vocabulary inherited from various languages of Vanuatu —although these are essentially limited to flora and fauna terminology. While the influence of these vernacular languages is low on the vocabulary side, it is very high in the morphosyntax . As such, Bislama can be described simply as

84-445: A + b i ; z ¯ = a − b i {\displaystyle z=a+bi;\quad {\overline {z}}=a-bi} and to represent a line segment in geometry (e.g., A B ¯ {\displaystyle {\overline {AB}}} ), sample means in statistics (e.g., X ¯ {\displaystyle {\overline {X}}} ) and negations in logic . It

126-458: A lingua franca for communication between ni-Vanuatu, as well as with and between foreigners. Although it has been primarily a spoken-only language for most of its history, the first dictionary of Bislama was published in 1977. A new dictionary was published in 1995. This, along with its second edition in 2004, has helped to create a standardised and uniform spelling of written Bislama. Besides Bislama, most ni-Vanuatu also know their local language,

168-429: A diacritic will be written like a macron, although it represents another diacritic whose standard form is different: Continuing previous Latin scribal abbreviations , letters with combining macron can be used in various European languages to represent the overlines indicating various medical abbreviations , particularly including: Note, however, that abbreviations involving the letter h take their macron halfway up

210-408: A handful of speakers, and indeed several have become extinct in recent times. Generally however, despite the low numbers for most of the indigenous languages, they are not considered especially vulnerable to extinction. Bislama , a creole language derived from English, similar to Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea and other nearby creoles, is the first language of many urban ni-Vanuatu , that is,

252-602: A language with an English vocabulary and an Oceanic grammar and phonology. During the period of " blackbirding " in the 1870s and 1880s, hundreds of thousands of Pacific islanders (many of them from the New Hebrides – now the Vanuatu archipelago) were taken as indentured labourers, often kidnapped, and forced to work on plantations, mainly in Queensland, Australia , and Fiji . With several languages being spoken in these plantations

294-573: A localised pidgin was formed, combining English vocabulary with grammatical structures typical of languages in the region. This early plantation pidgin is the origin not only of Bislama, but also of Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea , and Pijin of the Solomon Islands ; though not of Torres Strait Creole in the north of Australia. This creole started spreading throughout the Vanuatu archipelago at

336-480: A number of vernacular languages of the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu , particularly those first transcribed by Anglican missionaries . The macron has no unique value, and is simply used to distinguish between two different phonemes. Thus, in several languages of the Banks Islands , including Mwotlap , the simple m stands for /m/ , but an m with a macron ( m̄ ) is a rounded labial-velar nasal /ŋ͡mʷ/ ; while

378-421: A particle which is placed before the verbal phrase of a sentence – is sometimes merged with the third person pronoun, giving the words hemi and emi , respectively, in singular, and oli in plural. Some of these markers also have lexical meanings. For example, save can mean "be able to" but it is also a verb "know". Dialects exist, based mainly on different pronunciations in different areas which stem from

420-525: A sentence are indicated with markers such as stap , bin and bae that are placed in the sentence. The plural is formed by putting ol before the word. For example, bia 'beer'; ol bia = "beers". Ol comes from the English "all". When used with numbers, the singular form is used. 2 bia, 3 bia, etc. The personal pronouns of Bislama closely resemble those of Tok Pisin . They feature four grammatical numbers (singular, dual, trial and plural) and also encode

462-427: A tilde ( M̃ and P̃ ) or a following W ( MW and PW ), were then spelled with a macron , following the conventions used for some vernacular Vanuatu languages: M̄ was used for /mʷ/ and P̄ for /pʷ/ . On the island of Pentecost , the avoiuli script is sometimes used for Bislama. The shapes of the letters derive from sand-drawing. It has distinct letters for NG and NGG , but otherwise corresponds closely to

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504-600: A transitive suffix. The form of that suffix is /-em/, /-im/, or /-um/, depending on vowel harmony . If the last vowel of the verb's stem is either -u- or -i-, then that vowel will normally be copied into the transitive suffix – however, there are rare exceptions. For all other stem vowels, the transitive suffix has its default form /-em/: Exceptions exist, such as luk i m ("look"). Examples of transitive verbs which exceptionally don't take this suffix include: kakae 'eat, bite'; trink 'drink'; save 'know'; se 'say'. Verbs do not conjugate. The tense, aspect and mood of

546-531: Is a diacritical mark : it is a straight bar ¯ placed above a letter, usually a vowel . Its name derives from Ancient Greek μακρόν ( makrón ) 'long' because it was originally used to mark long or heavy syllables in Greco-Roman metrics . It now more often marks a long vowel . In the International Phonetic Alphabet , the macron is used to indicate a mid-tone ; the sign for a long vowel

588-435: Is a macron, there are no other diacritics used above letters, so in practice other diacritics can and have been used in less polished writing or print, yielding nonstandard letters like ã ñ õ û , depending on displayability of letters in computer fonts . In Obolo , the simple n stands for the common alveolar nasal /n/ , while an n with macron ( n̄ ) represents the velar nasal /ŋ/ . Also, in some instances,

630-565: Is also used in Hermann–Mauguin notation . In music, the tenuto marking resembles the macron. The macron is also used in German lute tablature to distinguish repeating alphabetic characters. The Unicode Standard encodes combining and precomposed macron characters: Macron-related Unicode characters not included in the table above: In TeX a macron is created with the command "\=", for example: M\=aori for Māori. In OpenOffice , if

672-487: Is instead a modified triangular colon ⟨ ː ⟩. The opposite is the breve ⟨˘⟩ , which marks a short or light syllable or a short vowel. In Greco-Roman metrics and in the description of the metrics of other literatures, the macron was introduced and is still widely used in dictionaries and educational materials to mark a long (heavy) syllable . Even relatively recent classical Greek and Latin dictionaries are still concerned with indicating only

714-456: Is notoriously difficult, and sometimes the object of controversy. The number of 112 listed below may differ from other counts proposed in the literature, depending partly on these difficulties. All indigenous languages of Vanuatu are Oceanic . Three are Polynesian languages of the Futunic group: Emae , Mele-Fila and Futuna-Aniwa . The remaining languages belong to these three groups of

756-597: Is seldom used by younger speakers of Bislama to refer to sea cucumbers, as a new re-borrowing from pseudo-French bêche de mer , which has taken the form besdemea , has become more popular. The Bislama Latin alphabet uses the letters A, B, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U, V, W, Y and the digraphs AE , AO and NG . An older Latin orthography, used before 1995, had É (now written E ), AI and AU (now AE and AO ). For those vowels in hiatus, AÏ and AÜ were used (now written AI and AU ). Labialized consonants (used in loanwords), now written with

798-542: Is the Bible completed in 1998. "Tufala i stap yet long Betlehem, nao i kam kasem stret taem blong Meri i bonem pikinini. Nao hem i bonem fasbon pikinini blong hem we hem i boe. Hem i kavremap gud long kaliko, nao i putum hem i slip long wan bokis we oltaim ol man ol i stap putum gras long hem, blong ol anamol ol i kakae. Tufala i mekem olsem, from we long hotel, i no gat ples blong tufala i stap." While they were still in Bethlehem,

840-417: Is the voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ . In Marshallese , a macron is used on four letters – ā n̄ ō ū – whose pronunciations differ from the unmarked a n o u . Marshallese uses a vertical vowel system with three to four vowel phonemes, but traditionally their allophones have been written out, so vowel letters with macron are used for some of these allophones. Though the standard diacritic involved

882-633: The Southern Oceanic branch of Oceanic: Below is the Ethnologue 's list of most of the indigenous languages of Vanuatu, which are still spoken or were until recently. It provides links to an OLAC list of media resources on the language. Tip: Click on the column title to change the sort order. The following list of 138 Vanuatu languages is from François et al. ( 2015 :18-21). Macron (diacritic)#Letter extension A macron ( / ˈ m æ k r ɒ n , ˈ m eɪ -/ MAK -ron, MAY - )

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924-422: The alveolar trill /r/ – by contrast with r , which encodes the alveolar flap /ɾ/ . In Bislama (orthography before 1995), Lamenu and Lewo , a macron is used on two letters m̄ p̄ . m̄ represents /mʷ/ , and p̄ represents /pʷ/ . The orthography after 1995 (which has no diacritics) has these written as mw and pw . In Kokota , ḡ is used for the velar stop /ɡ/ , but g without macron

966-420: The clusivity distinction: 1st person non-singular pronouns (equivalent of English we ) are described as inclusive if they include the addressee (i.e. {you + I}, {you + I + others}), but exclusive otherwise (i.e. {I + other people}). Bislama pronouns do not decline . The third person singular hem , also written em lacks gender distinction, so it can mean either he, she or it. The predicate marker i –

1008-487: The English word "belong", blong takes the place of 'of' or the genitive case in other languages. Just like of in English, it is one of the most widely used and versatile words in the language, and can indicate possession, country of origin, defining characteristics, intention, and others. Verbs in Bislama usually consist of a stem word (borrowed from English, French or indigenous languages); most transitive verbs add to this

1050-452: The Latin alphabet above, though capitals are seldom used, punctuation differs, there are digits for higher numbers and logograms for commonly traded commodities such as pig tusks. Two frequent words in Bislama are "long" and "blong", which take the place of many prepositions in English or French. Long holds many other related meanings, and is sometimes used in improvisation. Originally from

1092-459: The Pacific in 1888 and 1889, "the natives themselves have often scraped up a little English ... or an efficient pidgin, what is called to the westward Beach-la-Mar ." In Jack London 's story "Yah! Yah! Yah!", one of his " South Sea Tales ", there is repeated a reference to "a bastard lingo called bech-de-mer ", and much of the story's dialogue is conducted in it. Today, the word bislama itself

1134-486: The Portuguese bicho do mar "sea animal". In the early 1840s, sea cucumbers were also harvested and dried at the same time that sandalwood was gathered. The names biche-la-mar and Sandalwood English came to be associated with the kind of pidgin that came to be used by the local laborers between themselves, as well as their English-speaking overseers. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in an account of his travels through

1176-461: The archipelago ( listed below ), all of them belonging to the Austronesian family of languages. Vanuatu is the country with the highest density of languages per capita in the world: it currently shows an average of about 1,760 speakers for each indigenous language, and went through a historical low of 565; only Papua New Guinea comes close. Some of these languages are very endangered , with only

1218-473: The ascending line rather than at the normal height for unicode macrons and overlines: ħ . This is separately encoded in Unicode with the symbols using bar diacritics and appears shorter than other macrons in many fonts. The overline is a typographical symbol similar to the macron, used in a number of ways in mathematics and science. For example, it is used to represent complex conjugation : z =

1260-435: The country's population (63.2% in 2009) speak an indigenous language as their first language, with Bislama as a second language. English and French are generally spoken as third languages, in spite of their official status. Vanuatu is home to more than a hundred indigenous languages: a recent count lists 138. Among them, three became extinct in recent decades. Many are named after the island they are spoken on, though some of

1302-443: The different sounds of the native languages. The future tense marker can be heard to be said as: Bambae, Mbae, Nambae, or Bae. There are also preferences for using Bislama or native words that vary from place to place, and most people insert English, French, or local language words to fill out Bislama. So in the capital city it is common to hear 'computer'; in other places one might hear 'ordinateur'. The longest written work in Bislama

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1344-469: The larger islands have several different languages. Espiritu Santo and Malakula are linguistically the most diverse, with about two dozen languages each. Some language names refer to networks of dialects rather than unified languages. Uripiv, for example, is a dialect continuum spoken across several islands in Malampa Province . In such cases, the decision as to how many languages should be counted

1386-495: The length (weight) of syllables; that is why most still do not indicate the length of vowels in syllables that are otherwise metrically determined. Many textbooks about Ancient Rome and Greece use the macron, even if it was not actually used at that time (an apex was used if vowel length was marked in Latin). The following languages or transliteration systems use the macron to mark long vowels : The following languages or alphabets use

1428-486: The local language of their father and/or mother, as well as their spouse, oftentimes. The country's official languages of tuition in schools and educational institutions are English and French. The name of Bislama (also referred to, especially in French, as Bichelamar ) comes via the early 19th century word Beach-la-Mar from pseudo-French biche de mer or bêche de mer , sea cucumber , which itself comes from an alteration of

1470-411: The macron to mark tones : Sometimes the macron marks an omitted n or m , like the tilde , in which context it is referred to as a " nasal suspension": In romanizations of Hebrew , the macron below is typically used to mark the begadkefat consonant lenition . However, for typographical reasons a regular macron is used on p and g instead: p̄, ḡ . The macron is used in the orthography of

1512-443: The people of Vanuatu! God has given us this land; We are grateful for it, We are strong, we are free in this land; We are all brothers! CHORUS We have many traditions And also many modern ways, But we are all one And this is who we are. CHORUS We know there is much work to be done On all our islands. God helps all of us, He is our Father. CHORUS Languages of Vanuatu The Republic of Vanuatu has

1554-446: The residents of Port Vila and Luganville ; it is the most common second language elsewhere in the Vanuatu islands. In recent years, the use of Bislama as a first language has considerably encroached on indigenous languages, whose use in the population has receded from 73.1 to 63.2 percent between 1999 and 2009. Out of the three official languages, Bislama is the most spoken in Vanuatu, followed by English, and lastly French. From

1596-402: The simple n stands for the common alveolar nasal /n/ , an n with macron ( n̄ ) represents the velar nasal /ŋ/ ; the vowel ē stands for a (short) higher /ɪ/ by contrast with plain e /ɛ/ ; likewise ō /ʊ/ contrasts with plain o /ɔ/ . In Hiw orthography, the consonant r̄ stands for the prestopped velar lateral approximant /ᶢʟ/ . In Araki , the same symbol r̄ encodes

1638-870: The time came for Mary to give birth. Then she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger (lit. " a certain kind of box where people used to put hay for animals to eat "). They did so, because there was no room in the inn for them to stay. Bislama words CHORUS: Yumi, Yumi, yumi i glad long talem se Yumi, yumi, yumi ol man blong Vanuatu God i givim ples ya long yumi, Yumi glat tumas long hem, Yumi strong mo yumi fri long hem, Yumi brata evriwan! CHORUS Plante fasin blong bifo i stap, Plante fasin blong tedei, Be yumi i olsem wan nomo, Hemia fasin blong yumi! CHORUS Yumi save plante wok i stap, Long ol aelan blong yumi, God i helpem yumi evriwan, Hem i papa blong yumi. CHORUS English translation CHORUS: We are, we are, we are happy to proclaim We are, we are, we are

1680-455: The times when Vanuatu was a British-French condominium , there is still an unofficial separation line between regions where English or French are taught at school. According to Ethnologue , English is the first language of 6,000 people (2% of the population) and it is spoken as a second language by 120,000 people (40%). French is the first language of 1,800 people (1%) and is spoken as a second language by 87,000 people (29%). The majority of

1722-414: The turn of the 20th century, as former blackbirds and their descendants began to return to their native islands. Knowledge of this creole would facilitate communication not only with European traders and settlers, but also between native populations, and because Vanuatu is the most language-dense country in the world (one count puts it at 113 languages for a population of 225,000), Bislama usefully serves as

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1764-545: The world's highest linguistic density per capita. Despite being a country with a population of less than 300,000, Vanuatu is home to 138 indigenous Oceanic languages. The country's three official languages are of foreign origin: English , French , and Bislama , an English-based creole language . Additional languages are also spoken as a result of recent migrations (e.g. Samoan , Hakka Chinese , Mandarin Chinese ). There are over one hundred local languages spread over

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