[?]thography Based

Pidgin

[?]thography Based [?] Dr. Hall's Work

TE orthography of the new Papua-New Guinea standard work on Pidgin (coming along a) will be based on that of fessor R. A. Hall, Jnr. This can regarded as a triumph for pure nee and theory because fessor Hall did not visit the ritory until 1954, by which b he had already formulated his )ry on Pidgin as a language, all is a Professor of Linguistics Cornell University, NY, and in : spent a period at the Adelaide versity, during which time he able with a grant from the :genheim Foundation to make field visits to the Territory, subsequently wrote a book jlished by Pacific Publications) :d Hands off Pidgin English, in ;h he defended Pidgin as a uage against the attacks of rists who regarded it as a ve language” or, as someone put it, a “monstrous per ion.” 1955, the P-NG Education sory Board decided to accept in as a language and now ‘a standard alphabet and spelling is to be printed, lose who are antagonistic

towards Pidgin English can muster some excellent arguments; however, it is firmly implanted in the life of native New Guinea and the Education Advisory Board was taking a realistic view when it decided to use Pidgin in order to teach native children to read and write. That it is capable of study like any other language is proved by the fact that Professor Hall became interested in it in 1942 when he studied and prepared vocabularies for US troops from as far away as New York State.