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Welcome

A punctured tyre caused me to stop on an unlit suburban road one night during my last visit to Port Moresby in 1975.

Having heard much about lawlessness and violence, I became alarmed when a small group of people appeared out of nowhere. “ Egu motuka ia kerere. Mani umui durua". I called to them. In no time, several rough-looking youths were helping to change the tyre.

When they found that I knew their village and, indeed, some of their village elders, what might have become a nasty situation for me turned into a happy encounter. Such is the power of Hiri Motu.

Long before foreigners came to Papua, the Motu and their neighbours in the west used a pidginised form of Motu when trading with each other. The Motu people believe that Edai Siabo of Boera village, legendary founder of the hiri (trading voyages), initiated this language. According to Rev. Dr. H.A. Brown, “the” expert on the Toaripi language, the linguistic evidence points rather to its having been a Toaripi invention; Hiri Motu “may be described briefly as a form of speech that utilises a simple Motu vocabulary with a structure that grammatically and syntactically resembles Toaripi”.

During the 1890’s this form of Motu became the lingua franca of the police force and acquired the name Police Motu.

To-day, it is used throughout what used to be the Territory of Papua and, as Sir John Guise told the 1971 study conference which, among other matters, proposed the better name Hiri Motu, “if one wishes to make an impact on the minds of people, one has to speak Hiri Motu”.

It is one of the three official languages in the nation’s parliament, the others being English and Pidgin. And although Pidgin is now spoken almost everywhere in Papua New Guinea, Hiri Motu continues to be a vigorous lingua franca. For one thing, it

helps the numerically inferior Papuans to maintain their regional identity; for another, it is a much more melodious and “genuinely” Melanesian language than Pidgin. Unlike true Motu, Hiri Motu is not difficult to learn provided that one pays at least as much attention to conver sational practice as to reading grammars and dictionary.

Dr. W.G. Lawes’ Motu dictionary is, of course, the fore-runner of today’s works on Hiri Motu, and there have been many changes, in Motu as well as in Hiri Motu, since the first printing of Lawes’ opus in 1872. In recent years, linguists, notably some in the ANU Research School of Pacific Studies, have done some valuable work on Hiri Motu. Beginning Hiri Motu, by T.E. Dutton and C.L. Voorhoeve (1974), is the best book for serious study, but The Dictionary and Grammar of Hiri Motu contains enough to enable any foreigner in government or business to gain a working knowledge of the language. (It surprises me that the PNG Government does not require its foreign employees to become fluent in at least Pidgin or Hiri Motu. The post-1945 colonial administra tion would have been in much better con tact with its subjects had more than just a handful of its white officers known both lingae francae).

That indefatigable ex-missionary, ex politician and now ostensibly retired chap.

known among Papuans as sene (ancestor), Percy Chatterton, has not only been a member of the committee responsible for the Dictionary and Grammar of Hiri Motu but he has recently written a small booklet, Say It In Motu, which justifies its sub-title; An Instant Introduction to the Common Language of Papua, and is, of course, not about Motu but Hiri Motu. So, if you are visiting or intend to visit Port Moresby or the southern provinces of Papua New Guinea, “pronunciation”, “greetings”, “some useful single words”, “please and thank you”, “asking questions”, and other things in Say It In Motu are sure to save you more than the $1.50 it costs, and you will receive the bonus of a smiling welcome wherever people hear you learning their language.

As for that motor car of mine that went kerere, Chatteron’s English equivalent of the word is “wrong”, Dutton and Voorhoeve have it as “trouble”, while the Dictionary and Grammar of Hiri Motu gives it as “mistake, blunder, trouble, acci dent, crime, incorrect, wrong”. You may take your pick because Hiri Motu, like Pidgin, is one of the most fluid languages in our world.

To Chatterton for his booklet, to Brian Amini’s committee and earlier toilers for their dictionary and grammer, and to peo ple like Sinaka Goava, Peter Livingston, and the late Maynard Lock who pioneered broadcasting in Hiri Motu, goes a "tanikiu bada, bada herea. Papua ena gado korikori ena mauri dalana umui vada

hamaoromaoroa ’

Harry Jackman

(The Dictionary And Grammar Of

Hiri Motu.

By B. Amini and Others. Published by PNG Govt. Office of Information, Konedobu, 1976. $2.00.)

(Say It In Motu

By P. Chatteron. Published by Pacific Publications (Aust.), Sydney, 1975. $1.50)