The Pacific

Need For Lingua Franca Of

Practical Suggestion Based on 'Pidgin’

A letter to the Editor, by J. H. DAWKINS

REFER to Mr. George Hill’s very interesting talk on the ew Hebrides Condominium at the icific Islands Society’s gathering History House on March 26.

Most interesting of all, to me, as the question raised about a iguistic medium for purposes of itive education in Pacific Islands id Territories, and your own ry earnest remarks thereon.

I think the answer to this ques >n is written large in our British story, which cries aloud that the iglish language is itself a “Pid a”; so why not develop the icific Islands “pidgin” and mould for educational purposes? 1 am neither gentleman, scholar •r philologist. Of the foregoing ven words, one is composed of itin and German, another of reek and Latin, and the other e come to us from Norse and riandic languages which can trace eir origins back to Indo-Euro an Sanskrit. Not one word is the original language of the itish Isles. 1 can well imagine Augustine, 7 A.D. (later canonised) writing me from England to Pope egory and saying; “I got language trouble here. The lives speak a kind of ragged tin, which includes a lot of bad >rds learned by their ancestors >m Roman soldiers. With this is xed a lot of the barbaric Goth, Hun, Dane and Norse m. At every other village they x their noises differently, and ire is no getting to the bottom them. I think I had better send ne of our 40 monks to Scotland, ales or Ireland, where I hear ;y really have languages of their m” 7TTH the exception of Wycliffe’s ' Bible (1370 A.D.) and laucer’s Canterbury Tales, a little er, there were hardly any books itten in England in English. Latin s the literary language; and from 66 onward, Norman French was, understand, the language used ' official documents and matters State. The language in laucer’s Tales has a distinctly )rman French flavour.

When Caxton set up his first nting press in London in 1476, was hard put to it for an Eng

lish language in which to print.

There was no such thing as an English dictionary, and Dr. John son was nearly three centuries away.

However, Caxton and his old mate Van Wynkyn de Worde got busy and, in the rest of Caxton’s life time, 96 books were printed in English.

Then what happened? This “Pid gin of bad Latin, horrible French

and Mulligatawny of noises simply romped home and became the richest language in the world. Came Milton, Spencer, Ben Jonsen, Shakespeare, and the James 1 Authorised version. Then in 1755 (things moved slowly in those days) Johnson’s Dictionary, which gave us a standard literary English. And ever onward until centuries later English became the basis of a Lingua Franca amongst all the natives, traders, planters and mis sionaries of a million scattered is lands and islets in the great broad Pacific.

OACIFIC “Pidgin” has already * started on its way to becoming

a written language (Dec. PIMs o« the late 1930's with reference to Lutheran Missions’ printed transi lations of parts of the Bible, ano the Creed and Lord's Prayer). A : the end of the war with Japan cards printed in “Pidgin” telling o:< Japan’s capitulation, were showereo from aeroplanes over native village;; in Japanese-occupied territories.

All that is needed now is thai a “Pidgin” be moulded to the re: quired purpose and that we ceas# to call it “Pidgin” any more, ano that we give it the status of s language.

When I was a small boy one ot Lord NorthclifFs highly successful weeklies used to print a weekly column in Esperanto, in the hop* of popularising that great attemp at an international language. L was probably that which helped U keep Esperanto alive —for it is na dead yet.

Esperanto, however, is an arti ficial language and therefore need some forcing along.

THE Pacific Lingua Franca (hen I suggest dropping the wor “Pidgin”) is a natural growth tha should need only a little cultivai ing and pruning. I would sugges “Paxlingfrank” as a name until