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( Tok Pisin)
Tok Pisin (tok means "word" or "speech" as in "talk", pisin means "pidgin") is a creole spoken throughout Papua New Guinea; in parts of Western, Gulf, Central, Oro and Milne Bay Provinces familiarity with Tok Pisin may be less universal, especially among older people. It is an official language of Papua New Guinea and the most widely used language in that country. Between 5 and 6 million people use Tok Pisin to some degree. Between 1 and 2 million are exposed to it as a first language, including children in areas with dominant vernacular languages whose parents and siblings speak to them first in Tok Pisin before teaching them their own language, and perhaps 1 million use Tok Pisin as a primary language. Tok Pisin is also—perhaps more commonly in English—called New Guinea Pidgin and, largely in academic contexts, Melanesian Pidgin English or Neo-Melanesian. Given that Papua New Guinean anglophones almost invariably refer to Tok Pisin as Pidgin when speaking English (and note that the courts of Papua New Guinea refer to it as "Pidgin" in the published reports See for example Schubert v The State [1979] PNGLR 66) it may be considered something of an affectation to call it Tok Pisin, much like referring to German and French as Deutsch and français in English. However, Tok Pisin is favored by many professional linguists to avoid spreading the misconception that Tok Pisin is still a pidgin language; although it was originally a pidgin, Tok Pisin is now considered a distinct language in its own right because it is a first language for some people and not merely a lingua franca to facilitate communication with speakers of other languages. Since its formation, it has been steadily developing a more complex and distinctive grammar as it has undergone creolization.
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