Talk:Hiri Motu

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Hiri Motu grammar and syntax

The article claims that Hiri Motu (both dialects) have an Austronesian grammar and syntax. Not being formally trained in linguistics, I will not try to use technical terms, but as a life long speaker of Hiri Motu (I grew up in Gulf Province), I must dispute this statement. The original (tribal) Motu language is, of course, Austronesian in grammar and syntax. But one of the key differences between Motu and Hiri Motu, is that Hiri Motu largely does not use standard Austronesian grammar structures. Rather, it follows similar structures to Tok Pisin.

"True" (Tribal) Motu verbal phrases are often one word, including verb, tense, person and even mode, and where applicable, negation, and may include object (in pronoun suffix form). This is not true of Hiri Motu. The subject pronoun is usually a prefix though in negation may be a suffix, so is the negation. I am not fluent in tribal Motu - these complexities are one of the reasons why! Possession is indicated by a suffix added to the noun. (This last is immitated in the Central dialect of Hiri Motu).

Hiri Motu grammar uses auxilliary words to designate tense ("vadaeni" added after the verb to indicate past tense, and "dohore" added before, or "gwauraia" after the verb, to indicate future tense), and the subject is usually a separate pronoun, as is the object. Negation is a separate word (lasi) added after the verb. Thus, "I do not know" in tribal Motu is "asidibagu" (not-know-I), while in Hiri Motu, it is "lau diba lasi" (I know not)... And possession in Hiri Motu uses possessive words somewhat as English does - thus, "My father" in tribal Motu is "tamagu" (father-mine), but in Hiri Motu is "Lau egu tamana" (I my father)... 58.168.7.251 (talk) 09:13, 6 March 2010 (UTC) (Colin) (Now identifying myself as the originator of this comment). Ptilinopus (talk) 07:36, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

It's still Austronesian though. Austronesian languages - like Indo-European ones, do not all have identical grammatical structures, French and German for instance, like "tribal" Motu, are moderately highly inflected (lots of verbal (not to mention adjective and noun) suffixes and prefixes). Languages like Latin and Sanskrit - older Indo-European languages - are much more highly inflected again - whereas English, to take one of the most extreme examples - has shed almost all of its inflections. The English verb structure, funnily enough, consists mainly of particles and auxillaries, so that its relationship to Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) is very like that of "pure" and "Hiri" Motu! In exactly the same way, Hanuabada Motu, Maori, and Tongan are all moderately highly inflected (to different degrees) - whereas Malay, Indonesian, and Hiri Motu all have simplified grammars, shedding inflections (again, to differing degrees), or replacing them with auxillaries.

One of many features that help one pick an Austronesian language from an Indo-European one is the use of "postpositions" instead of prepositions. (In the "non-central" dialect of Hiri Motu we tend to use the "all-purpose" postposition "dekanai" - but it still comes AFTER the noun it governs instead of before (as do adjectives, of course. Another is the ai/ita distinction - "we" that includes the person spoken to and "we" that doesn't. These (and lexis, or vocabulary) are actually the kind of things that linguists look for when they're classifying a language - inflections differ widely, both in form and application, even between quite closely related languages - so that they're not a lot of help. Some people even say Tokpisin must be an Austronesian language because it distinguishes between "mipela" and "yumi" - a bit far fetched for me, because a lot of Tokpisin "grammar" and almost all the vocabulary is simplified English (Indo-European) - and while it has some Austronesian features (the mipela/yumi one is the only one I can think of off-hand) it also has things, so I'm told, from some of the many PNG languages that are NOT Austronesian.

Incidentally - the Central dialect (or "good" Hiri Motu as it used to be called when the language was actually used a little more than it is) is indeed closer to "pure" Motu in a number of ways - but this is not "imitation" as such - mainly just that it hadn't gone quite so far down the "simplification" road. It's probably the older, original form of the language that existed before European contact.

Lau ese Motugado lau diba tahua lagani idaunai - Daru kahanai - lau uhau neganai - to murinai be Bereina kahanai lau lao dinana be idia kiri badina mero kurokurona ese gunika tauna bamona ia herevahereva idia kamonai - lau vavagu ese hari gadona ia hadibagu.

I learned Hiri Motu many years ago in the Western Province - as a very young man - later when I moved to the Mekeo people thought it was very funny to hear a white lad talk like a "bushy" - my father-in-law taught me this kind (Central dialect) of Motu!

Have fun! --Soundofmusicals (talk) 14:26, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Another Austronesian feature of TokPisin which it shares with Hiri Motu and "true" Motu is the brother/sister usage. In Motu (both types), kakana/tadina refer to older/younger sibling of the same gender while taihuna refers to sibling of opposite gender. The same is true of brata and susa in Tok Pisin especially among rural people (though urban speakers have largely adopted the English usage of assigned gender) - brata refers to sibling of same gender, susa to sibling of opposite gender. Ptilinopus (talk) 23:26, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Lau danu Motu gado lau abia lagani haniahui elabona imahui idia ore - Kikori kahanai, lau mero negana. Murinai momokani (1999-2002) lau lou PNG dekenai, Lae kahanai, bona lauegu gaukara ia hakaugu gabu momo-ai. Lau davaria lauegu Motu gado hari taunimanima idia gwau be Central ena bamona; Kikori dekenai herevadia momo idia boio.

I too picked up Hiri Motu forty to fifty years ago in Kikori (Gulf) when I was a boy. Much later (1999-2002) I returned to PNG to the Lae area, and my work led me to many parts of the country. I found that people now said my Motu was like the Central dialect; in the Kikori area many words had been lost.

Nice to hear from you Soundofmusicals! Ptilinopus (talk) 06:43, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Madi, hari be gado inai na kahirakahira idia laloaboio vadaeni. Ita buruka taudia siboda gauna.

I'm afraid the language is just about forgotten nowadays. Just something for us oldies.

--Soundofmusicals (talk) 15:37, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Dialects

The following sentence seem to be causing confusion and probably needs recasting:

The dialect names refer to the first languages spoken by users of this lingua franca.

To clarify the situation - Hiri Motu was spoken by people speaking (as a first language) a number a different languages and dialects. Of course this was the whole point. People whose own "village" languages were mutually quite unintelligible were able to communicate using Hiri Motu.

Now Hiri Motu speakers fell into two broad categories, based on their "original" or "first" languages.

One group spoke the original ("pure") language (Motu) or one of a number of quite closely related languages (for instance Waima, Mekeo, Roro etc). To a lesser extent, this group also included many speakers who had as their mother tongue another Austronesian language less closely related to Motu, but still having many words, basic constructions etc. in common. This group spoke what was usually called "Central" Hiri Motu (or the "Austronesian" dialect, as we call it here). The vocabulary included a larger percentage of the words of the original language, and the grammar was also a lot closer to "pure" Motu (although some parts of it were still radically simplified).

The other group of speakers spoke a very motley collection of first languages, few of them related in anyway to the Austronesian family, and many of them in no way related to each other either. Calling these languages "Papuan" is a convenience, apart from occurring nowhere else but New Guinea they have little in common, and they certainly don't form a single "family" of related languages. Austronesian languages, on the other hand, are found from Easter Island to Madagascar and many points between. Mastering an Austronesian language (even a simplified one like Hiri Motu) is naturally more difficult if you don't already speak one, and unsurprisingly even quite fluent "Papuan" language speakers tended to use an even more "pidginised" or simplified form of Motu. Their vocabulary tended to be much more limited, and the grammar even simpler than the Austronesian dialect.

Now the sentence in question attempts to summarise all THAT in 15 words - and unsurprisingly fails. Anyone like to have a go at writing a (probably rather longer) sentence or group of sentences that covers the facts succinctly, but in a more comprehensive way? --Soundofmusicals (talk) 09:41, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Requested move 15 July 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved. Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 08:28, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

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Hiri Motu language → Hiri Motu – WP:COMMONNAME and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. "Hiri Motu" redirects to the language page. --Relisted. George Ho (talk) 05:08, 23 July 2015 (UTC) Shhhhwwww!! (talk) 02:07, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm under the impression that at en.wiki the standard name format (article title) for languages is Name language. Examples:

• Ancient Macedonian language
• English language
• French language
• German language
• Hungarian language
• Italian language
• Portuguese language
• Russian language
• Tupi language
• Uzbek language

►Sampayu 02:24, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

Nope. The trend has change albeit quietly:

1. Afrikaans
2. Amharic
3. Bislama
4. Bokmal
5. Dzongkha
6. Esperanto
7. Haitian Creole
8. Hindi
9. Interlingua
10. Kannada
11. Kinyarwanda
12. Kirundi
13. Latin
14. Lingala
15. Luganda
16. Malayalam
17. Northern Sami
18. Nynorsk
19. Old Church Slavonic
20. Pali
21. Pashto
22. Sanskrit
23. Scottish Gaelic
24. Standard Tibetan
25. Tagalog
26. Twi
27. Urdu
28. Volapuk

Shhhhwwww!! (talk) 07:05, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

Well, in this case it seems to me that it's important to settle a standard and specific rule for assigning titles to this type of article (language name). Anyway, by following the current rules it makes more sense to use Hiri Motu instead of Hiri Motu language, mostly because of its common use as a noun instead of an adjective (unlike e.g. English, which can be a noun or an adjective, hence the need of a disambiguation page).►Sampayu 12:08, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

• Support I normally oppose Shhhhwwww's attempts to subvert WP guidelines without proper discussion, and their arguments for this move are (as usual) spurious, but even a broken clock ... "Hiri Motu" is preferred by WP:NCLANG because the original ethnicity is Motu. There is no Hiri Motu people. If the name were in English ("Police Motu"), the dab "language" would never have been appended. — kwami (talk) 05:14, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
  • @Kwamikagami: I wasn't aware of WP:NCLANG.  Thanks for letting me know.►Sampayu 23:09, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
• Support per reasons given by Kwami. Abrahamic Faiths (talk) 01:16, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

"Secret language"

There is a custom in PNG to use a language (any language) that will conceal the content of a conversation from someone present whom you want to exclude. A sort of "anti-lingua franca" if you like. Educated people may for instance talk in English to exclude an uneducated person from their conversation, people from a particular tribal area may use their own local tokples for exactly the same purpose. Pidgin (or, nowadays much less frequently, Motu) may well be used to conceal what is said from Europeans or other foreigners.

While there might occasionally be a legitimate reason for this (say, the person you are trying to deceive is a "rascol" trying to mug you) it is usually considered very bad manners, in fact in polite conversation one may even use a language in which one is not particularly fluent in preference to one's first or second language - so that everyone present can understand what you have to say. For instance an educated person may use Pidgin or Motu to a European (when they both would be much more comfortable using English) if there are people present who speak little or no English that they want to include in the conversation, or even just to avoid the impression that they are being knowingly rude. We might even say, "Let's talk in Pidgin (or English, or Motu, or Kiriwina) so that Mr. X. can understand" - or repeat one's self in the other language for the benefit of the "other person".

In Pidgin a language used to conceal what is said from some of the hearers is called a Tokhaid. I'm not sure that I could give an exact English equivalent of this - "secret language" might come close. In Motu you'd probably call it gado idauna or something like that - although there's not a specific term (that I am familiar with, anyway).

All this is basically to help explain why I am reverting a recent well-intentioned (and no doubt factual) edit - it is not only uncited, but it gives an unintended (and quite false) impression that this is a feature of Hiri Motu in particular, or that it occured in the instance mentioned and not otherwise. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 21:17, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Pidgin vs Austronesian

Please see Pidgin and Creole before making claims of what constitutes a language or not. A Pidgin language is a language that springs up rather quickly as a blend of several languages whose primary purpose is for communication. Hiri Motu fits this description. Regarding this edit Hiri Motu is not an Austronesian langue, it is referred to as a creole in the article's text and references. See here for why Hiri Motu is considered a pidgin. See this too, Hiri Motu is clearly refered to as a Pidgin here.

The fact that the majority of it's features are Austronesian based does not make it an Austronesian language per say, the same way as Saramaccan is not considered and Indo-European language. Sure Hiri Motu might be an Austronesian-based pidgin in the same way that Saramaccan is a Indo-European -based creole, but at the end of the day both are still creoles and pidgins and this should be reflected in the respective templates. Its great that you speak Hiri Motu, but the references and citations refer to it as pidgin and that is what I am going with. Inter&anthro (talk) 02:27, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

To be very polite a "mixture of Austronesian and Papuan" is not what the article says at all, and in any case is just not so. Nor do any of our sources. There is very simply no such thing as a "Papuan family" of languages - the label "Papuan" referring to a language means nothing more or less than "a language indigenous to the island of New Guinea, other than a member of the Austronesian language family. Some "Papuan languages" are in fact more or less closely related to each other, but many are not - the only thing they have in common is not being Austronesian.

English (this language here) is a simplified version of another language called Middle English, which is a turn a simplified version of another language called Anglo Saxon ("blended in the mixer with a simplified version of old French). Modern Italian is a simplified version of Medieval Latin - which is in turn a simplified version of Classical Latin. Modern Castilian, Catalan, Portuguese, French, and many other European languages are also, in their own distinctive ways, "simplified Latin". Frankly, languages, whether family they belong to, have a tendency to "shed grammar" as time goes by - a high degree of literacy, and the presence of a written literature slows this process but it is pretty inexorable all the same.

The mechanism by which a true Pidgin arises, and the way that it evolves into a Creole, is described by modern linguists as another process altogether. It is not simply a process of simplification (viz. the distinction in Tokpisin between "yu" and "yupela" - which is lost in modern English, and the "yumi/mipela" distinction which English has never possessed). As the article has always stated (since long before I ever edited it) Hiri Motu has "some of the features of a Pidgin or a Creole" but it is not really either a true Pidgin or a Creole. It did not originally evolve as a means of communication between "masters" and "servants", but between interdependent trade partners whose own languages were distinct, but mostly more or less closely related. (E.g. Roro, Waima, Mekeo etc.) - these, and almost all of the languages of the region concerned, were (and are of course) Austronesian. Where a specific lexical or grammatical feature tends to be held in common between several of these language Hiri Motu will tend to keep the feature - where the vocabulary or grammar is very different is where the "simplification" occurs.--Soundofmusicals (talk) 12:57, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Uh when did I ever say that a pidgin was communication between servant and master? Hiri Motu clearly originated as a simplified version of a language for trade, similarly to Basque–Icelandic. And the fact that languages tend to simplify over time is nothing new, point is while English has gradually simplified over time as it naturally evolves, Hiri Motu was simplified specifically and intentionally for the meaning of communication.

Anyway this is a digression. If you want to list Hiri Motu as an Austronesian language, find a reliable source that says that Hiri Motu is an Austronesian language, not an Austronesian-based language/pidgin/creole, not a mixed language, but an Austronesian language. So far all the sources in the article mention that Hiri Motu is a mixed or pidgin language. Inter&anthro (talk) 19:08, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Doubly digressive indeed, if all we are arguing about is the colour coding of the template. We do indeed need much more reliable sources here - a lot of what we have is far from "reliable" - the Ethnologue page for instance actually echoes OUR text! The current wording, that the "parent language" is Austronesian (which of course is patently factual) seems a reasonable compromise. Again - my talk page is not really the place for this - and I am copying it to the talk page for the article itself. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 12:21, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

which pidgin

Since the unity of New Guinea Police Force in 1946, "Police Motu" had lost most of its functions in police work. Pidgin was adopted at that time and was used with the majority of the police force.

I'm guessing Tok Pisin? —Tamfang (talk) 20:49, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

before and after

Hida always follows the noun it is referring to, while edana always follows it.

Should one of these be "precedes"? If not, the sentence could be shorter. —Tamfang (talk) 17:15, 20 February 2023 (UTC)