Language Bears the Burden of My Experience

Influence of Pidgins, Vernaculars, and Pacific English in Pacific Literature

I have always wanted to see the influence of pidgins and local languages, including variant of English used in Pacific Islands writing.

I could not help notice I was working all the time with the languages I know as an Indigenous Pacific Islander.

It was important for me to express myself freely in all languages I know.

Research on Influence of pidgins, creoles, vernaculars, and Pacific English in contemporary writings in Oceania are prevalent.

Included in this essay are links to online resources that might interest you.

I guess that was part of the reason to write this essay "Pidgin Poetics in Oceania", now published in Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Literature. Link https://oxfordre.com

An excerpt is given below.

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The first PNG Writer: Hosea Linge

With so much going on around us we tend to forget about important foundations of our history. I could not get out of my mind the much neglected discussion on the first Papua New Guinean writer. Every now and then we need to acknowledge the important parts of our history as we move forward. I would like to acknowledge the first Papua New Guinean to write a book in the 1930s. A New Irelander by name of Ligeremaluoga wrote and published his book under the title The Erstwhile Savage: An Account of the Life of Ligeremaluoga in 1932. Ligeremaluoga is from Kono village in New Ireland Province. Ligeremaluoga’s book is by all accounts the first written account by a South Pacific Islander. Most of what we know as Pacific writing is dated to the 1960s and 1970s. Last month I presented a paper at the University of Hawaii to discuss another early Papua New Guinean writer by name of Ahuia Ova of Hanuabada, who published his memoirs in 1939, six years after Ligeremaluoga’s autobiography. Both

Milky Pine Power

Young Milky Pine ( Alstonia scholaris ) The importance of plant names in the local language is an example of a complex structure of meaning. Different plants are used for specific purposes in our traditional societies. The same plant known by a common name can have sacred names to different people. Most often these sacred names are linked to myths, rituals, and spiritual powers. Many people know the general names for plants, but different species have a different name or an additional word to indicate colour, wild plants, domesticated plants, or cultivated. Where plants have medicinal and ritual values they may have sacred names known only to those who claim ownership of the plant and its powers. The tanget ( Cordyline fruticosa ), for example, is generally known in Nagum Boiken language as hawa . This name includes the cultivated ones, which are red in color and appears in long and short round leaves. The green wild ones are also kno

PAPA SAM’S INSPIRING PRINCIPLES OF SUCCESS

Papa Sam. Be Inspired: Prepare for the Age of Wisdom through personal viability. (Port Moresby: Human Resource Development. 2019): 222 pages. One of the reasons I agreed to review Papa Sam’s book is because I had a chance encounter with him as we lay side by side at the Pathology lab at the Port Moresby General Hospital some time back many years ago. We were donating blood that day. I was there to donate blood to save my wife after her surgery from uterus cancer. He smiled at me and said he was donating his blood because he had too much and that it was a way of releasing stress and anxiety. I had a long smile and a wonderful memory of that day. Be Inspired: Prepare for the Age of Wisdom through personal viability , is book written by Samuel Tam Senior, better known as Papa Sam. The book is a memoir about the principles of personal viability, education for life changing thinking for a better world, and true education and mind development. In short the book is a gem

Fern Ridge (Safla Rama) Digest

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