Talk:Lap-lap

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Out of touch?!

I cannot find any connection between the definition and description given here, and the reality in Papua New Guinea. Throughout both Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, the term lap-lap denotes a single length of cloth, often wide enough to extend from waist to below the knees, and long enough to wrap around the body one and a half times or more. It is wrapped around the body and fastened at front or towards the side by a variety of styles of tucking in. I grew up in PNG in the 1960s and 1970s, and worked there in the 1990s and 2000s. During all this time the term never denoted anything other than the above description. I have never seen a "lap-lap" with separate front, back or side components as described in this article, nor one held up with yarn or thread. Without reliable sourcing of CURRENT usage of the term, this article as it is deserves to be expunged. In PNG and Solomon Islands, the lap-lap as I have described it is the common garment for boys and men, though western attire has increasingly replaced it in public. Lap-lap is the term employed in Tok Pisin; in Hiri Motu, the word is "rami". In PNG and Solomon Islands, a belt is seldom used, though one was used in the version employed by the Papuan police during the colonial era - but that was much more modelled on the more formal Fijian sulu, than on the PNG lap-lap. Even the sulu as commonly worn more resembles a beltless lap-lap, though more tailored ones have become common. In fact the article on lava-lava more closely relates to lap-lap than the description given in this article. Correcting requested! Ptilinopus (talk) 06:02, 1 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]