Tok Pisin is an English Creole – that is, it is based on English but with an influence from a variety of other languages. It started out as a pidgin, but it has now become a language in its own right. It is a relatively new language, only dating back to the 1800s.
Tok Pisin is one of the official languages of Papua New Guinea, jointly with English. It has only about 50 thousand native speakers, but about 4 million people speak it as a second language and it is already replaced many minority languages.
Tok Pisin means “talk business” and it is seen as the language of economic development in the countries where it is spoken, which perhaps helps to explain its growth in popularity.
If you’d like to learn some words in Tok Pisin, take a look at this online dictionary: www.tok-pisin.com
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