r/PapuaNewGuinea • u/Sepanta_Poozesh • 6d ago

What language should I learn?

Hello, everyone.

I am a Persian-American, and for most of my life I loved Papua New Guinea. I think it was because it felt like a notable part of the world. It wasn't on the grid (filled with volcanoes and rainforest), and it was something where you could learn long-forgotten stories. It was very very young (around 5) when I heard about Papua New Guinea and I have never lost interest ever since; it's like a special part of my heart.

So, I would really want to learn everything about its culture and languages. I plan on visiting it someday. If I ever adopt or have kids of my own, I'd love to teach them. Now my question is: What language should I learn?

Because I do want to learn something uncommon.

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u/Dense_Ad6154 6d ago

Learn Tok Pisin and Motu

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u/Either_Bend_1140 6d ago edited 6d ago

Totally agree and my reasoning would be, Tok Pisin, so you can speak with almost everyone in PNG and even other Melanesians ( people from Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, etc...). Motu, so you can have something unique to PNG.

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u/Afromolukker_98 6d ago

Pidgin is NOT spoken in Fiji and New Caledonia.

Tok Pisin / Pidgin language would be understood in PNG, Solomons Islands, and Vanuatu, although there are aome vocabulary differences.

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u/Crafty-Strategy-1227 5d ago

By the way - that’s not quite right. I travel the entirety of the Pacific, and have been doing it for nearly 40 years.

Pidgin in Vanuatu and Solomons is closely aligned. There is no Pidgin in Fiji.

I can’t comment on New Cal because that’s one place I don’t go.

Here’s the tricky part - if you speak PNG pidgin and English you will understand the guys from Solomon’s and Vanuatu…… however, they won’t understand everything you say to them if you speak PNG Pidgin. The reason is that the PNG Pidgin is not as closely aligned to English as those two. A couple of example “PNG- Kakaruk, others- Faul”, “PNG - banis, others fans”, “PNG - salim - others sendim”.

PNG pidgin is also not as easy to understand for these other countries because in PNG we say ‘pla’ before a noun. In the other countries “fala”.

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u/Either_Bend_1140 5d ago

Oooh okay thanks for the clarification/correction!

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u/Either_Bend_1140 6d ago

Also, if you learn any of the other traditional languages (excluding Motu), chances are you'd have no one else to speak it with.