Torres Strait Creole (), also known as Torres Strait Pidgin, Brokan/Broken, Cape York Creole, Lockhart Creole, Kriol, Papuan, Broken English, Blaikman, Big Thap, Pizin, and Ailan Tok, is an English-based creole language (a variety of Pidgin English) spoken on several Torres Strait Islands of Queensland, Australia; Northern Cape York; and south-western coastal Papua New Guinea (PNG).
It has an estimated 20,000–30,000 mother-tongue and bi/tri-lingual speakers. It is widely used as a language of trade and commerce.
History
Records of pidgin English being used in Torres Strait exist from as early as the 1840s (e.g. Moore 1979), and therefore Torres Strait Creole may very well be as old as, if not older than, its sister languages, and not a descendant of any of these. It was spread throughout the islands because many considered it to be English. The main importers of the pidgin were British and other sailors, many of whom were South Sea Islanders, both Melanesian and Polynesian, as well as Island South-East Asians, Jamaicans, Cantonese Chinese, Japanese, and others. Therefore, Torres Strait Creole has various characteristics of these different types of Pidgin, the main ones being mid- to late 1800s Malay-area Pidgin English (but not Singlish, one of its modern representatives), Pacific Pidgin and Jamaican Patois. It may have creolised quite early (pre-1900) on Darnley Island, and somewhat later (post-1910) at St Pauls on Moa and on Yorke Island in the Central Islands. Creolisation is post-1960s elsewhere.
The Papuan dialect was replaced by Hiri Motu in many parts of its former territory, which in turn is being replaced by Tok Pisin.
Dialects
Torres Strait Creole has six main dialects: Papuan, Western-Central, TI, Malay, Eastern, and Cape York. Its main characteristics show that it is a Pacific Pidgin, but the future in X [i] go VERB aligns it with Atlantic Creoles. Related languages are Pijin of the Solomon Islands, Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea, and Bislama of Vanuatu. The other creoles of Australia (such as Roper River Kriol and Australian Kriol language) are more distantly related, being descendants of the Pidgin English that developed in and around Sydney after the colonisation of Australia.
Dialects differ mainly from the influences in the various areas the language is spoken or by the language of the ethnic groups that use the language as well as a certain amount of superstrata influence from English. Apart from accent and intonation, differences are mainly vocabulary used for local fauna, flora and so on, retentions from local indigenous languages or other substrata languages (such as Malay) and minor differences in pronunciation because of substrata influences.
The dialects group generally into the Western-Central-Cape York dialects where the western and central language of Torres Strait (Kala Lagaw Ya) has a strong influence (an influence which is also 'over-powering' other sub-strata influences), 'TI' Brokan with a strong Malay/Indonesian-Filipino-European influence, Eastern Brokan with a South Seas and Meriam Mìr influence, and Papuan, with influences from languages such as Agöb, Bine, Gizrra, Wipi, Kiwai, Motu and (now) Tok Pisin. Influences from other languages such as Japanese are to do with vocabulary specific to Japanese (or the like) items.
Continuum
Torres Strait Creole exists as part of a lect continuum: a local language (Kalaw Kawaw Ya), a local language mix called Ap-ne-Ap, a pidgin basilect creole, a mesolect English influenced creole, local Torres Strait (Thursday Island) English, and General Australian English, as this example shows: English: I'm really tired Thursday Island English: I'm proper tired Mesolect Brokan: Ai prapa taiad Basilect Brokan: Ai mina taiad Ap-ne-Ap: Ngai mina taiad mepa Kalau Kawau Ya: Ngai mina gamukœubaasipa
Speakers
The 2021 Australian census recorded 7,776 people who spoke Yumplatok at home, up from 6,171 in the 2016 Australian census. Linguists working on the language have estimated that a considerably larger number, some 20,000 to 30,000 Indigenous Australians, speak it as a first, second, or third language. In 2007 a translation of the Bible was published, called the Holi Baibul, which was the first complete translation of the Bible into any Indigenous language within Australia.
Most Torres Strait Islander people speak Yumplatok in addition to their local languages, and a 2014 study suggests that the numbers of people speaking it are growing. It is widely used as a language of trade and commerce.
Phonology
Vowels
The language has the following vowels (with some dialect variation): Front Central Back Close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Open
Vowel length for the language as a whole is non-contrastive, though in some subdialects/dialects it appears to be contrastive.
Consonants
Labial Dental Alveolar Palatal Dorsal Nasal Plosive Fricative ~ ~ Sonorant ~
The dental-alveolar contrast exists in the Western, Central and Cape York dialects, however only exists in other dialects in so far as either English or Western-Central influences force a contrast, or where the voiced alveolar stop realises as the rhotic tap (e.g. Western-Central wasamada 'what's the matter/what's wrong', Eastern/Papuan wasamara). In the Papuan dialects, the only alveolar consonant is , while and can be either dental (i.e. fall together with and ) or alveolar, according to local language. In Meriam influenced Broken, is dental, while is alveolar.
The stops , , , , and are aspirated and also have fricative allophones, particularly (thus , , , , , ) while and vary in pronunciation when word initial and medial between and , with only appearing at the ends of words in Torres Strait and Papuan dialects. These reflect indigenous language allophony as well as a rationalisation of the larger English (and Malay, etc.) consonant phoneme inventory. The consonants , , , , , , and do not have any major allophonic variation, while varies between and (particularly when syllable final), and in songs is often pronounced .
Grammar
Pronouns
The following are the forms of the personal pronouns in the Western-Central-Cape York dialects. Where the Eastern dialect is concerned, the dental-alveolar contrast is on the whole non-operative, and the dual forms are less commonly used than elsewhere. Furthermore, the 1–2 form yumi is often used as the general non-singular 1–2 form; and is sometimes used as such in other dialects in rhetorical discourse. The Central Islands dialect (and sometimes others) tends to also use wi for the 1st person plural.
number 1st person 1st–2nd person 2nd person 3rd person (identifying) 3rd person (non-identifying) singular subject ai — yu em i singular non-subject (where different) mi — — — em dual subject mitu yumi yutu dhemtu – dual object (where different) — — — dhemtu/-emtu – plural subject mipla yumpla yupla dhempla òl plural object (where different) — — — dhempla/-empla dhempla/-empla
The non-identifying 3rd plural òl is also found as a nominal plural marker: I gad òl bùk ianau 'There are books here'
Interrogatives and Demonstratives
this, these: full form dhiswan, colloquial form dhisan, reduced, clause initial form san, sa that, those: full form dhaswan, colloquial form dhasan, reduced, clause initial form san, sa There is a strong tendency for dhiswan and its forms to be used to the exclusion of dhaswan. Who is that? Dhaswan i udhat?, Dhiswan dhe i udhat?, Dhasan i udhat?, Dhisan dhe i udhat?, Dhisan i udhat?, San i udhat?, San dhe i udhat?
Three interrogatives and the two deictics have two forms, this being (interrogatives) a reduced clause initial form and a fuller clause final form, and in the case of the deictics, a pre-clitic and independent form, as in the following examples:
Wane yu luk? [alt. Wane yu lukem?] / Yu luk wanem? 'What do you see?' Kenu i ya kam. / Kenu i kam iya. 'A canoe is coming this way.'
Clause position variation (initial, final) what: wane, wanem where: we, wea who: udha, udhat Pre-clitic vs independent form: there: dhe, dhea here: ya, iya
Two interrogatives have variant words/forms, used interchangeably: when: wataim, wen why: aukam, wanempò
Dialectal variation is only found in two forms: how: wiswei; Central Islands: waswei why, what's the matter: wasamada; Eastern-Papuan wasamara
Articles
The language has no indefinite article, and uses the definite article much less than it is in English, it having a more demonstrative feel than the English equivalent. There are singular, dual and plural forms: singular: dha — dha kenu 'the canoe' dual: dhemtu, dhostu — dhemtu kenu, dhostu kenu 'the two canoes' plural: dhem — dhem kenu 'the canoes' The demonstrative articles have a general form, and a specific dual form, as well as variation, with a strong tendency to use the clitics iya and dhea to specify position; the definitie articles are often used with the demonstrative clitics to express the demonstrative articles: this man: dhis man, dhis man ia these men (dual): dhistu man, dhistu man ia, dhemtu man ia these men (plural): òl dhis man, òl dhis man ia, dhem man ia all these men: òlgedha man ia that man: dhas/dhat man, dhis man dhea those men (dual): dhostu man, dhistu man dhea, dhemtu man dhea those men (plural): òl dhas/dhat man, òl dhis man dhea, dhem man dhea all those men: òlgedha man dhea
Syntax
Torres Strait Creole is a somewhat atypical of Pidgin-Creole languages in its word order and various other syntactic (and grammatical) properties. Though the normal sentence word order is the expected transitive S-V-O-X(-) and intransitive S-V-X(-), there is variation in the form of S-X-V(-O), such as where the directional adverbs dhe 'there' and ia/ya 'here' come before the verb, as happens in all local languages (this is in common with virtually all verb tense/aspect/mood markers in the language).
Verb clause strings are normal in the language: Bala blo mi bi teke kenu kam baik. 'My brother brought the canoe back' Plein i dhe plai go / Plein i dhe go plai / Plein i plai dhe go / Plein i plai go dhea 'The plane is flying away (over) there'
The four sentences in Torres Strait Creole carry a semantic difference difficult to show in the English translation. Plein i dhe go plai is the basic sentence — 'the plane is flying [away] over there'. Plein i plai dhe go is more along the lines of 'the plane is flying away that way'; plein i plai go dhea is 'the plane is flying away heading that way', and finally plein i dhe plai go is 'the plane is there flying away'.
Unlike many pidgin-creoles, the adjective categorically comes before the noun. Similarly, adverbs that mark adjectives come before the adjective: Big sisi bl'em bi kese tu prapa big redkala pis lo ausaid sanbaing. 'His/her big sister caught two really big red fish at/on the outer sandbank'
Unlike Tok Pisin, Bislama and the Australian creoles, -pla is not used as an adjective formant.
When not before the referent, adjectives are often suffixed by -wan, the adjective nominaliser, or by an appropriate nominal, such as man 'man, person' Bala blo mi i bigwan / bigman. 'My brother is big' Dhis dhamba ya i prapa naiswan. 'This bread is really nice'
All verb tense and aspect markers come before the verb (see Verbs below), apart from the clitic nau.
A fully operational relative clause structure exists, marked by the relative clause marker we: Dha totol we ai bi kese em i stap ananith lo aus. 'The turtle I caught is under the house' Ama bin luk smol gel we i dhe sidaun krai krai krai lo skul blo dhem piknini. 'Mum saw a little girl (who was) sitting and crying at the kids' school'