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Talk:Kastom

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Blurred distinction: Pijin (Solomon Islands) v. Bislama (Vanuatu)

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This article identifies Kastom as a word from the Pijin language (←Note upper case P; Pijin is a proper name), i.e. the English-based creole language of the Solomon Islands, but then goes on to cite the existence of Kastom villages in nearby Vanuatu, where the official English-based creole, related but not identical to Pijin, is Bislama.

The two languages do share this word Kastom having as far as I can tell the same cultural significance, so I admit there's a bit of a challenge here w.r.t. identifying linguistic ownership. Clearly though, it's more than just Pijin, and where Vanuatu is being mentioned it is a Bislama word. I would have substituted a cover term such as Neo-Melanesian, but the latter includes Tok Pisin, where so far (See e.g. this dictionary, where the word closest in meaning appears to be either pasin or kastam, in either case not identical...) I have not been able to verify that either the common noun kastom or the cultural identifier Kastom is actually in regular local use.

Can anyone suggest how to make the term's linguistic identification more precise?--IfYouDoIfYouDon't (talk) 02:04, 27 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]