Books by Craig Alan Volker
Nagoya: Sankeisha, 2018
This book uses the story of a boy who is a picky eater to introduce Engish-speaking children to t... more This book uses the story of a boy who is a picky eater to introduce Engish-speaking children to the production of hatcho miso and to its importance in Japanese cuisine and culture. With its bilingual English and Japanese text it is also useful for helping Japanese learners of English talk about this aspect of their culture in English. It is suitable for upper primary and secondary classroom use as well as a home reader.
Education Projects International LLC, 2018
With about 840 distinct languages representing 12% of all human languages, Papua New Guinea has ... more With about 840 distinct languages representing 12% of all human languages, Papua New Guinea has more languages than any other country on earth. Besides this linguistic diversity, it also has an amazing 5% of the world’s total biodiversity, resulting in a rich biocultural diversity developed over a long process of interaction between its many indigenous cultures and nature.
This book documents our work with one community to document some of their knowledge about the rich birdlife in their area and how it impacts their lives.
In September and October 2016 our international team worked together with Nalik people in the New Ireland Province of Papua New Guinea, recording and documenting the interrelationship between birds and their way of life, and literature: myths, songs, folk legends, social organisation, and customary laws.
Our goal was to contribute to the empowerment of this community by recognising its roots and organising workshops about its biocultural diversity to bring this knowledge to the next generation. The workshop participants were Grade 6 and 7 students from Madina Primary School together with adults from Madina and other nearby villages. We used an action-research methodology and divided the project in three steps:
1. recording oral stories and their meanings in a local context together with the community;
2. exploring these stories through practical interdisciplinary activities with the young students, discussing their importance for them as young Nalik people, and interpreting the oral stories in written prose and drawings;
3. verifying and editing the texts produced by students with adult leaders in the community.
The material that came out of this process of consultation was edited again and put into book form based on the views and experiences of the participants who researched legends, traditional songs, and local knowledge about the history and culture of their own people.
A Maani: Birds and Nalik Culture was published as a crowdfunded project through the online platform Indiegogo and will be distributed free to schools in northern New Ireland Province in 2019.
Nagoya: Sankeisha Publisher, 2015
This bilingual Japanese and English book for children is suited as a reader in second language cl... more This bilingual Japanese and English book for children is suited as a reader in second language classrooms or to read at home. In simple language and with the Japanese all in hiragana, it tells the story of a brother and sister who explore all that there is to see in an urban park.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2015
The cultural diversity of the Asia-Pacific region is reflected in a multitude of linguistic ecolo... more The cultural diversity of the Asia-Pacific region is reflected in a multitude of linguistic ecologies of languages of lesser power, i.e., of indigenous and immigrant languages whose speakers lack collective linguistic power, especially in education. This volume looks at a representative sampling of such communities. Some receive strong government support, while others receive none. For some indigenous languages, the same government schools that once tried to stamp out indigenous languages are now the vehicles of language revival. As the various chapters in this book show, some parents strongly support the use of languages other than the national language in education, while others are actively against it, and perhaps a majority have ambivalent feelings. The overall meta-theme that emerges from the collection is the need to view the teaching and learning of these languages in relation to the different needs of the speakers within a sociolinguistics of mobility.
Nagoya: Screenplay Fourin, 2013
This book for upper beginning and intermediate Japanese learners of English looks at famous movie... more This book for upper beginning and intermediate Japanese learners of English looks at famous movie stars from different countries. Each chapter examines one star's life and career. The reading passages are followed by reading comprehension questions and grammatical issues.
Nagoya: Sankeisha Publisher, 2011
This is a revised and updated edition of Internet Surfing: Hawai'i, a popular university textbook... more This is a revised and updated edition of Internet Surfing: Hawai'i, a popular university textbook for Japanese learners of English. This book introduces Hawai'i to Japanese intermediate and advanced learners of English. Topics include Hawaiian history, contemporary culture, food, and people. each chapter has a reading, bilingual vocabulary list, comprehension questions, and internet research questions.
Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2008
This is the most comprehensive dictionary in print of the main lingua franca of Papua New Guinea.... more This is the most comprehensive dictionary in print of the main lingua franca of Papua New Guinea. Entries have been written with the expatriate learner of Tok Pisin and the PNG learner of English in mind and often include example sentences.
Nagoya: Sankeisha Publisher , 2002
This introduction to culture and intercultural communication is for upper intermediate and advanc... more This introduction to culture and intercultural communication is for upper intermediate and advanced university students. The first part of the book deals with the basic components of culture, while the second part of the book deals with real-life intercultural misunderstandings. Students are given the tools to solve intercultural conflicts in a way that emphasises consultation and avoids blaming and stereotyping.
Each chapter has comprehension and discussion questions as well as a practical problem to solve.
Nagoya: Sankeisha Publisher, 2001
This book introduces Hawai'i to Japanese intermediate and advanced learners of English. Topics in... more This book introduces Hawai'i to Japanese intermediate and advanced learners of English. Topics include Hawaiian history, contemporary culture, food, and people. each chapter has a reading, bilingual vocabulary list, comprehension questions, and internet research questions.
New York: Peter Lang, 1998
This book provides the only description to date of the grammar of Nalik, an Austronesian language... more This book provides the only description to date of the grammar of Nalik, an Austronesian language of northern New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. Particular attention is paid to variation between different social groups, much of which is a result of universal bilingualism in Tok Pisin.
Phd Dissertation, University of Hawai'i, 1994
Nalik is an Austronesian language of central New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. It is spoken by appro... more Nalik is an Austronesian language of central New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. It is spoken by approximately 4,000 persons, all of whom are also fluent in Tok Pisin. This dissertation describes the most salient features of Nalik morphology and syntax. An important characteristic of contemporary Nalik grammar is the variation between constructions used by members of different social groups.
There is considerable variation between the syntactic constructions used by various speakers of Nalik. Generally, the more innovating speakers are male, younger rather than older, and have low traditional status and orientation. Innovative speakers tend to avoid the passive, to use adjectival verbs and prepositions in a way similar to Tok Pisin and English and not to differentiate alienable and inalienable possession, not to use dual and paucal markers. In part these innovations reflect the fact that Tok Pisin in particular has become the dominant language in an increasing percentage of language domains used by Nalik speakers. They are also the result of the loss of marked grammatical features.
Master of Literary Studies (MLitSt) thesis -- University of Queensland, 1982
This masters thesis from the University of Queensland is the first publication documenting the Un... more This masters thesis from the University of Queensland is the first publication documenting the Unserdeutsch (Rabaul Creole German) language of Papua New Guinea. This creole language is the only known creole language based on German.
Book chapters by Craig Alan Volker
The Cultural Legacy of German Colonial Rule
Germany colonised the northern part of what is today Papua New Guinea for only three decades. Thi... more Germany colonised the northern part of what is today Papua New Guinea for only three decades. This chapter describes the enormous changes brought to Papua New Guinea through this colonial engagement and the generally positive view that Papua New Guineans have of Germany today. The diminishing roles of the German language, German residents, and the Unserdeutsch (Rabaul Creole German) -speaking mixed race community are described in the period following the Australian invasion, the post-WWII pre-Independence era, and the post-independence present. Although there are almost no visible signs of the German era and Germany itself has a colonial amnesia regarding its presence, the social and cultural effects affect Papua New Guinean lives even today.
Education in Languages of Lesser Pow,er: Asia-Pacific Perspectives (IMPACT: Studies in Language and Society Book 35), 2015
With only about 6 million people, Papua New Guinea has over 800 separate languages, more than any... more With only about 6 million people, Papua New Guinea has over 800 separate languages, more than any other country. Until recently, English was the only language of formal education. At the end of the 1990s the national government initiated an educational reform mandating that the language of kindergarten through Grade 2 be in a "language of the community". This chapter looks at the example of the challenge of establishing a school in the Nalik language of New Ireland Province. While the change to vernacular education has meant more children have at least a passive understanding of Nalik, the change from an English-only educational system is blamed by many parents for declining educational standards.
Education in Languages of Lesser Power: Asia-Pacific Perspectives (IMPACT: Studies in Language and Society Book 35), 2015
The Asia-Pacific region is culturally and linguistically extremely diverse. Many languages are sp... more The Asia-Pacific region is culturally and linguistically extremely diverse. Many languages are spoken by indigenous or immigrant communities with little political power and some are in danger of becoming extinct in the near future. Government policies regarding the use of the languages of these communities of lesser power vary greatly, with an overall trend towards homogenisation and a strengthening of the nation-state and its language. Choices made about the place of languages of lesser power in education have a profound effect on the self-image and identity of the speakers of those languages. Failing to include them threatens the richness of the cultural diversity of the region.
南太平洋の言語 (Hiroshima: Keisuisha), 2013
Although the dialects of Melanesian Pidgin English spoken in Melanesia (Tok Pisin, Solomons Pijin... more Although the dialects of Melanesian Pidgin English spoken in Melanesia (Tok Pisin, Solomons Pijin, Bislama, and Torres Straits Creole) and Hawaiʻi Creole English share a number of common lexical items of Polynesian origin and superficial grammatical similarities, these can be traced to universals in the process of pidginisation and creolisation as well as the influence of Chinese Pidgin English during the early years of each language. We cannot say that one is the direct descendant of the other or that they share a common linguistic ancestor.Although the dialects of Melanesian Pidgin English spoken in Melanesia (Tok Pisin, Solomons Pijin, Bislama, and Torres Straits Creole) and Hawaiʻi Creole English share a number of common lexical items of Polynesian origin and superficial grammatical similarities, these can be traced to universals in the process of pidginisation and creolisation as well as the influence of Chinese Pidgin English during the early years of each language. We cannot say that one is the direct descendant of the other or that they share a common linguistic ancestor.
異文化のクロスロード (Tokyo: Sairyusha), 2007
Even though Germany colonised the northern part of what is today Papua New Guinea in the late 180... more Even though Germany colonised the northern part of what is today Papua New Guinea in the late 1800s and German was the official language, the German language was not used as a lingua franca and for the most part remained the in-group language of the German ruling class. Serious attention to indigenous education in German was made only in the last years of German rule before the Australian invasion in World War I. The influence of German could be felt, however, in the many German loan words in Tok Pisin and indigenous languages for newly introduced technology and garden crops. Many geographic areas and new settlements also received German names. After the establishment of an Australian League of Nations mandate at the end of World War I, most Germans were repatriated, but families descended from mixed-race children raised at the Vunapope Catholic Mission near Rabaul continued to speak a German creole, Unserdeutsch (also known as Rabaul Creole German). A German influence also remained in many of the geographic names.
After World War II and in the lead-up to Papua New Guinean independence, the impact of the German language continued to decline. Schools for German missionaries closed as crime and localisation policies made Papua New Guinea less attract to German-speaking missionaries. A growth in education in English meant that many of the German names for introduced technology and crops were replaced by their English equivalents in Tok Pisin. Most of the Unserdeutsch-speaking mixed-race community took advantage of the opportunity to acquire Australian citizenship and left before or soon after independence. The last school teaching German as a foreign language stopped teaching the language in 2003. Today the only important linguistic legacy of German colonialism are geographic names.
Language in Papua New Guinea (Tokyo: Kuroshio), 2007
Even though Germany colonised the northern part of what is today Papua New Guinea in the late 180... more Even though Germany colonised the northern part of what is today Papua New Guinea in the late 1800s, the German language was not used as a lingua franca and for the most part remained the in-group language of the German ruling class. Serious attention to indigenous education in German was made only in the last years of German rule before the Australian invasion in World War I. The influence of German could be felt, however, in the many German loan words in Tok Pisin and indigenous languages for newly introduced technology and garden crops. Many geographic areas and new settlements also received German names.
After the establishment of an Australian League of Nations mandate at the end of World War I, most Germans were repatriated, but a German creole, Unserdeutsch, was continued to be spoken by families descended from mixed-race children raised at the Vunapope Catholic Mission near Rabaul. A German influence also remained in many of the geographic names.
After World War II and in the lead up to Papua New Guinean independence, the impact of the German language continued to decline. Schools for German missionaries closed as crime and localisation policies made Papua New Guinea less attract to German-speaking missionaries. A growth in education in English meant that many of the German names for introduced technology and crops were replaced by their English equivalents in Tok Pisin. Most of the Unserdeutsch-speaking mixed-race community took advantage of the opportunity to acquire Australian citizenship and left before or soon after independence. The last school teaching German as a foreign language stopped teaching the language in 2003. Today the only important linguistic legacy of German colonialism are geographic names.
Proceeds of the 8th Annual Conference, Association of Bahá'í Studies--Japan, 2000
This paper examines the process by which the Bahāʻī Faith has become merged with the culture of t... more This paper examines the process by which the Bahāʻī Faith has become merged with the culture of the Nalik people of Madina Village, New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea since its introduction in 1957. In this process indigenous beliefs and practises have been reinterpreted through the Bahāʻī system and Bahāʻī beliefs introduced from the Middle East via Australia and New Zealand have become modified by the Nalik culture environment into which it was brought. The paper contrasts this easy merging of the two belief systems with the antagonistic view that early Christian missionaries had towards indigenous culture.
Oceanic studies: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Oceanic Linguistics (Canberra: Pacific Linguistics C-133), 1996
This paper discusses nine types of variation among speakers of Nalik, an Austronesian language of... more This paper discusses nine types of variation among speakers of Nalik, an Austronesian language of northern New Ireland, Papua New Guinea: the disappearance of the passive construction, a move away from verbal comparative constructions, the shift in the future marker becoming an irrealis marker, the loss of a distinction between transitive and intransitive durative marking, changes in the use of irregular plural markers, the use of a numeral instead of a dual marker article, the blurring of the distinction between alienable and inalienable possession, and the move of the preposition meaning ‘with’ to a verbal construction. These innovative constructions tend to affect marked features in Nalik that are being levelled by contact with Tok Pisin and English in the speech of bilingual and trilingual Nalik speakers..
This variation seems to be caused by a move towards grammatical constructions that are more like those in Tok Pisin, which is becoming the dominant language in the Nalik area. The centres of innovation are generally younger speakers of the Northern East Coast dialect. The innovative forms are spreading through the population at an uneven rate and unevenly through the lexicon of individual speakers, causing variation between individuals and even in the speech of individual speakers.
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Books by Craig Alan Volker
This book documents our work with one community to document some of their knowledge about the rich birdlife in their area and how it impacts their lives.
In September and October 2016 our international team worked together with Nalik people in the New Ireland Province of Papua New Guinea, recording and documenting the interrelationship between birds and their way of life, and literature: myths, songs, folk legends, social organisation, and customary laws.
Our goal was to contribute to the empowerment of this community by recognising its roots and organising workshops about its biocultural diversity to bring this knowledge to the next generation. The workshop participants were Grade 6 and 7 students from Madina Primary School together with adults from Madina and other nearby villages. We used an action-research methodology and divided the project in three steps:
1. recording oral stories and their meanings in a local context together with the community;
2. exploring these stories through practical interdisciplinary activities with the young students, discussing their importance for them as young Nalik people, and interpreting the oral stories in written prose and drawings;
3. verifying and editing the texts produced by students with adult leaders in the community.
The material that came out of this process of consultation was edited again and put into book form based on the views and experiences of the participants who researched legends, traditional songs, and local knowledge about the history and culture of their own people.
A Maani: Birds and Nalik Culture was published as a crowdfunded project through the online platform Indiegogo and will be distributed free to schools in northern New Ireland Province in 2019.
Each chapter has comprehension and discussion questions as well as a practical problem to solve.
There is considerable variation between the syntactic constructions used by various speakers of Nalik. Generally, the more innovating speakers are male, younger rather than older, and have low traditional status and orientation. Innovative speakers tend to avoid the passive, to use adjectival verbs and prepositions in a way similar to Tok Pisin and English and not to differentiate alienable and inalienable possession, not to use dual and paucal markers. In part these innovations reflect the fact that Tok Pisin in particular has become the dominant language in an increasing percentage of language domains used by Nalik speakers. They are also the result of the loss of marked grammatical features.
Book chapters by Craig Alan Volker
After World War II and in the lead-up to Papua New Guinean independence, the impact of the German language continued to decline. Schools for German missionaries closed as crime and localisation policies made Papua New Guinea less attract to German-speaking missionaries. A growth in education in English meant that many of the German names for introduced technology and crops were replaced by their English equivalents in Tok Pisin. Most of the Unserdeutsch-speaking mixed-race community took advantage of the opportunity to acquire Australian citizenship and left before or soon after independence. The last school teaching German as a foreign language stopped teaching the language in 2003. Today the only important linguistic legacy of German colonialism are geographic names.
After the establishment of an Australian League of Nations mandate at the end of World War I, most Germans were repatriated, but a German creole, Unserdeutsch, was continued to be spoken by families descended from mixed-race children raised at the Vunapope Catholic Mission near Rabaul. A German influence also remained in many of the geographic names.
After World War II and in the lead up to Papua New Guinean independence, the impact of the German language continued to decline. Schools for German missionaries closed as crime and localisation policies made Papua New Guinea less attract to German-speaking missionaries. A growth in education in English meant that many of the German names for introduced technology and crops were replaced by their English equivalents in Tok Pisin. Most of the Unserdeutsch-speaking mixed-race community took advantage of the opportunity to acquire Australian citizenship and left before or soon after independence. The last school teaching German as a foreign language stopped teaching the language in 2003. Today the only important linguistic legacy of German colonialism are geographic names.
This variation seems to be caused by a move towards grammatical constructions that are more like those in Tok Pisin, which is becoming the dominant language in the Nalik area. The centres of innovation are generally younger speakers of the Northern East Coast dialect. The innovative forms are spreading through the population at an uneven rate and unevenly through the lexicon of individual speakers, causing variation between individuals and even in the speech of individual speakers.
This book documents our work with one community to document some of their knowledge about the rich birdlife in their area and how it impacts their lives.
In September and October 2016 our international team worked together with Nalik people in the New Ireland Province of Papua New Guinea, recording and documenting the interrelationship between birds and their way of life, and literature: myths, songs, folk legends, social organisation, and customary laws.
Our goal was to contribute to the empowerment of this community by recognising its roots and organising workshops about its biocultural diversity to bring this knowledge to the next generation. The workshop participants were Grade 6 and 7 students from Madina Primary School together with adults from Madina and other nearby villages. We used an action-research methodology and divided the project in three steps:
1. recording oral stories and their meanings in a local context together with the community;
2. exploring these stories through practical interdisciplinary activities with the young students, discussing their importance for them as young Nalik people, and interpreting the oral stories in written prose and drawings;
3. verifying and editing the texts produced by students with adult leaders in the community.
The material that came out of this process of consultation was edited again and put into book form based on the views and experiences of the participants who researched legends, traditional songs, and local knowledge about the history and culture of their own people.
A Maani: Birds and Nalik Culture was published as a crowdfunded project through the online platform Indiegogo and will be distributed free to schools in northern New Ireland Province in 2019.
Each chapter has comprehension and discussion questions as well as a practical problem to solve.
There is considerable variation between the syntactic constructions used by various speakers of Nalik. Generally, the more innovating speakers are male, younger rather than older, and have low traditional status and orientation. Innovative speakers tend to avoid the passive, to use adjectival verbs and prepositions in a way similar to Tok Pisin and English and not to differentiate alienable and inalienable possession, not to use dual and paucal markers. In part these innovations reflect the fact that Tok Pisin in particular has become the dominant language in an increasing percentage of language domains used by Nalik speakers. They are also the result of the loss of marked grammatical features.
After World War II and in the lead-up to Papua New Guinean independence, the impact of the German language continued to decline. Schools for German missionaries closed as crime and localisation policies made Papua New Guinea less attract to German-speaking missionaries. A growth in education in English meant that many of the German names for introduced technology and crops were replaced by their English equivalents in Tok Pisin. Most of the Unserdeutsch-speaking mixed-race community took advantage of the opportunity to acquire Australian citizenship and left before or soon after independence. The last school teaching German as a foreign language stopped teaching the language in 2003. Today the only important linguistic legacy of German colonialism are geographic names.
After the establishment of an Australian League of Nations mandate at the end of World War I, most Germans were repatriated, but a German creole, Unserdeutsch, was continued to be spoken by families descended from mixed-race children raised at the Vunapope Catholic Mission near Rabaul. A German influence also remained in many of the geographic names.
After World War II and in the lead up to Papua New Guinean independence, the impact of the German language continued to decline. Schools for German missionaries closed as crime and localisation policies made Papua New Guinea less attract to German-speaking missionaries. A growth in education in English meant that many of the German names for introduced technology and crops were replaced by their English equivalents in Tok Pisin. Most of the Unserdeutsch-speaking mixed-race community took advantage of the opportunity to acquire Australian citizenship and left before or soon after independence. The last school teaching German as a foreign language stopped teaching the language in 2003. Today the only important linguistic legacy of German colonialism are geographic names.
This variation seems to be caused by a move towards grammatical constructions that are more like those in Tok Pisin, which is becoming the dominant language in the Nalik area. The centres of innovation are generally younger speakers of the Northern East Coast dialect. The innovative forms are spreading through the population at an uneven rate and unevenly through the lexicon of individual speakers, causing variation between individuals and even in the speech of individual speakers.
While all of the issues of Kivung / Language & Linguistics in Melanesia are online, and there is much valuable research on Tok Pisin and languages related to it, it is not always easy to sift through the many volumes of the journal to search out what is needed. Nor is it easy to see immediately where researchers have been particularly active over the years (e.g., education and sociolinguistics) and which areas have been neglected (e.g., phonology and syntax).
In an effort to stimulate further research into Tok Pisin (and to organise my own research a bit better!), I have put together the following bibliography of articles related to Tok Pisin and its closely related languages (Solomon’s Pijin, Bislama, Torres Strait Creole, and PNG English), from the earliest issues of Kivung to the 2020 issue of Language & Linguistics in Melanesia. The articles have been arranged in three lists: by topics, by chronological order, and by authors' names.
ビッカートンのバイオプログラム仮説は、人間は生まれつき言語的バイオプログラムを持って いるとし、そのバイオプログラムは、言語がなく育った子供たちの発話に特定の言語的結果をも たらすと提示している。この仮説は多数のクレオールの特徴を説明できるが、パプア・ニューギ ニアで話されている3つのクレオール(トク・ピジン語、モツ語系ピジン語、ラバウル・クレオー ル・ドイツ語)の文法構造を正確に予測することができない。これは、対立している語彙の入れ 替え過程と基層語の影響によるものである。
There is a widespread belief that the Holy Qu'rān cannot be translated, either because of actual linguistic difficulties or because it would be sacrilegious to do so. Nevertheless, significant portions of the Qu'rān have been translated into numerous languages. Translation, in fact, dates from the ministry of the Prophet Mohammed Himself, and the doctrine of "Qu'rānic inimitability" developed only several centuries after His ascension. There is an ongoing debate, however, as to whether translations are scripture itself or merely a form of commentary, Translators must also decide whether to adopt a verse form in imitation of the original and to what extent potentially opaque Arabic loan words for Islamic concepts should be used. Because of the inherent ambiguity of the original text, decisions in the translation of certain key passages are often made on the basis of sectarian doctrinal teachings, rather than objective exegesis.
Because of its origins in a master-servant colonial environment, and because of the perception of pidgin languages as "simple", the general public in Papua New Guinea tends to think of Tok Pisin Papua New Guinea Pidgin English as a "primitive" language without the complexities of natural languages, and therefore not suitable for "real" communication. This perception is examined using research into the universal patterns of complexity found in the taxonomies of the semantic fields of colour, zoological, botanical, and geometric shape terminology. This research has shown that languages develop terminology in these fields in universal patterns of increasing complexity. In all four semantic fields, Tok Pisin ranks high in the degree of spe-cialised complexity of the terminology available to its speakers. This indicates that Tok Pisin has a more complex lexicon than many non-pidgin languages in the world and that the common perception of the language as being "too simple" for efficient communication is false. Folk wisdom in Papua New Guinea would have it that Tok Pisin Papua New Guinea Pidgin English is a "primitive" language that cannot be used to communicate complex ideas. Both expatriates and indigenes often make claims which they usually do not back up with linguistic proofs that it would be impossible to differentiate details of thought in Tok Pisin to the degree necessary for communication in the modern world. This is an interesting hypothesis for linguists since, while pidgin languages are by definition simplified in comparison with non-pidgin languages, Tok Pisin is unusual among pidgin languages in being not only a means of everyday communication, but also a means of communicating for the purposes of artistic self-expression, magic, religion, linguistic play, and taboo, not only for the minority of speakers for whom it has
Rabaul Creole German emerged among mixed-race children at an orphanage near Rabaul and has never been spoken by many people. Today most speakers live in Australia and use English with their children and grandchildren. There is great variation in the speech recorded, with some speakers recorded using Standard German and others using a very creolised variety.
As the first dictionary of the Nalik language of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea is being prepared, this first report of work in progress discusses Nalik mathematics terminology. Today most Naliks use English / Tok Pisin numbers, but there is also an indigenous counting system that uses a mixed base five and base ten system. In the past there was also a sacred counting system used for ceremonial purposes. With the introduction of vernacular education in Nalik, terms have been coined to express modern mathematical concepts.
Although Papua New Guinea is the most multilingual country on earth, the development and use of interpreters and translators in the public service have been remarkably inefficient and unsystematic. This is due both to the the legacy of colonial rule by monolingual Australians and to ta lack of understanding of the different expectations of interpreters in Melanesian and Western cultures. Greater cultural sensitivity and better professional training are needed if the standard of interpreting and translation is to be improved sufficiently to permit access to government services by all citizens.
Although most Oceanic languages have an unmarked subject-verb-object (SVO) word order, the Papuan Tip Cluster of Oceanic languages in southern Papua New Guinea has an unmarked subject-object-verb (SOV) word order. Evidence from one of these languages, Motu, indicates an original SVO word order; Motu verbs have subject and direct object affixes that are in a SVO order, and both the order of adjectives and adverbs and the position of nominal direct objects are inconsistent with a verb-final typology. The contemporary SOV word order in Motu and by implication the other Papuan Tip languages is probably the result of contact with neighbouring non-Oceanic languages, which have SOV word order. This indicates the original word order in Proto Oceanic was SVO.
Because of racism during the colonial period, the mixed-race community was isolated, but as Papua New Guinea independence approached in 1975, most were offered, and accepted, Australian citizenship and decided to move to Australia. In the more racially relaxed atmosphere there, the community became dispersed and many married outside the community. The result is that today very few children are raised with any knowledge of Rabaul Creole German.
While most pidgin languages arise because of the need for people speaking different language to communicate, Rabaul Creole German arose because of the need for an identity marker for the group. In this way it is similar to Pitcairn-Norfolk, which has been described as a cant, i.e., a deliberate creation to exclude outsiders linguistically. Now that their is no need for protective self-isolation, Rabaul Creole German is disappearing. This purpose of self-identification and self-isolation must be regarded as the reason for the genesis and survival of at least some pidgin languages.
Résumé
Tout en étant conscientes des difficultés inhérentes à la traduction des écrits saints, les institutions bahá'íes ont toujours mis l'accent sur l'importance de la traduction. Aucune approche de la traduction biblique ou coranique ne correspond exactement a l'idéal bahá'í, de même qu'aucun dirigeant religieux du passé n'a cumulé, comme Shoghi Effendi, les roles de Gardien et de traducteur. Les institutions bahá'ís ont défini les questions théoriques essentielles relatives à la traduction des écrits bahá'ís. Lorsqu'on traduit les ecrits bahá'ís, la fidélité par rapport au texte original est primordiale. Fidélité signifie ici refléter la beauté de l'original tout en communiquant avec précision les concepts qu'il contient. La consultation fait partie intégrante du processus traductionnel et la traduction des écrits saints est considérée comme un outil pédagogique. Les traducteurs bahá'ís de nos jours doivent affronter une serie de problèmes pratiques découlant d'un manque de ressources, de différences culturelles et d'un sous-développement linguistique.
Resumen
Aunque la traducción de la Palabra Sagrada es de reconocida dificultad, las instituciones bahá'ís han siempre subrayado la importancia de la traducción. Ningún patrón de traducción bíblica o coránica alcanza allegar al concepto bahá'í, al igual que ningún dirigente religioso de tiempos pasados combina la doble y única función de Guardián y traductor como lo hizo Shoghi Effendi. Las instituciones bahá'ís han definido los asuntos teoréticos más resaltantes relativo a la traducción bahá'í. Al traducir los escritos bahá'ís es principalísimo mantener fidelidad al texto original. Gana definición al compararse fielmente a la belleza del original y cuando da a entender precisamente los conceptos que aquel imparte. La consulta es parte íntegra del proceso de traducción, y a las traducciones de los escritos se les ve como instrumentos de la educatión. Los traductores bahá'ís tienen que enfrentarse a numerosos problemas de índole práctico causados por falta de recursos, diferencias culturales, y subdesarrollo linguístico.