Hiri Motu
Hiri Motu | |
---|---|
Police Motu | |
Region | Papua New Guinea |
Native speakers | (Very few cited 1992)[1] 100,000 L2 speakers (2021)[1] |
Austronesian
| |
Latin script | |
Official status | |
Official language in | Papua New Guinea |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-1 | ho |
ISO 639-2 | hmo |
ISO 639-3 | hmo |
Glottolog | hiri1237 |
Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of Port Moresby (Capital of Papua New Guinea).[2]
It is a simplified version of
Even in the areas where it was once well established as a lingua franca, the use of Hiri Motu has been declining in favour of Tok Pisin and English for many years. The language has some statutory recognition.[3]
Origins
The term hiri is the name for the traditional trade voyages that created a culture and style of living for the Motu people. Hiri Motu became a common language for a police force known as Police Motu.
The name Hiri Motu was conceptualised in the early 1970s during a conference held by the Department of Information and Extension Services. During the conference, the committee recommended the name Hiri Motu for several reasons.
- The language's history is older than the name Police Motu implies. That was recommended because it was simplified from the language of the Motu people, which was the language used when they traded goods with their customers.
- Police Motu was then never used as a language of trade or social contact. Since the unity of New Guinea Police Force in 1946, Police Motu had lost most of its functions in police work. Pidgin[clarification needed] was adopted at the time and was used with the majority of the police force.
- The committee thought that the new name should have some meaning behind it. Instead of associating a language to the police, they thought the language should reflect the legacy of the language and how it is used in everyday life.
Motu people
The
Dialects
Hiri Motu has two dialects: "
The distinction between Motu and its "pidgin" dialects has been described as blurred. They form a continuum from the original "pure" language, through the established creoles, to what some writers have suggested constitutes a form of "Hiri Motu–based pidgin" used as a contact language with people who had not fully acquired Hiri Motu, such as the Eleman and Koriki.[4]
Phonology
Labial | Alveolar | Velar | Glottal | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nasal | m | n
|
|||
Plosive | voiceless | p | t
|
k | |
voiced | b | d
|
ɡ | ||
Fricative | β | s | h | ||
Tap
|
ɾ | ||||
Approximant | w | l
|
Front | Central | Back | |
---|---|---|---|
Close | i | u | |
Mid | ɛ | ɔ | |
Open | a |
Syntax
Personal pronouns
In the Hiri Motu language, the distinction between "inclusive" and "exclusive" forms of 'we' is very important. In the former case, 'we' applies to the speaker and listener while in the latter case 'we' does not include the listener.
We (inclusive) | We (exclusive) |
---|---|
Ita | Ai |
Possessives
- egu 'my'
- emu 'your (singular)'
- emui 'your (plural)'
- ena 'his, her, its'
- edia 'their'
Motu | Translation | S. | Pl |
---|---|---|---|
oi-emu | Yours | x | |
lau-egu | mine | ||
umui-emui | yours | x | |
idia | they |
For example, in the table above, lau-egu is placed before the noun, such as lau-egu boroma ('my pig').
The first half of the word (lau, oi) may be taken out of the word. For example, lau-egu boroma can be shortened to egu boroma.
Postpositions
Hiri Motu uses postpositions. A standard postposition is ai, which can mean 'in', 'on', or 'at'. For example, maua ai means 'in the box', pata ai means 'on the table', and Konedobu ai means 'at Konedobu (a location in Papua)'.
Because Hiri Motu does not allow double vowels, ai will often fuse with the word. Some examples:
- lalo-na-ai → lalonai – 'in, inside'
- lata-na-ai → latanai – 'on, on top of'
Word order
There are two
As word order can be arbitrarily chosen, ambiguity may arise in some cases.
For example, Inai mero boroma badana ia alaia can either mean 'This boy killed a big pig' or 'A big pig killed this boy'. To solve this, a subject marker can be used. In Hiri Motu, the subject marker is ese, which is placed immediately after the subject of the sentence.
With it, the sentence reads: Inai mero ese boroma badana ia alaia (literally, 'This boy <subject marker>, a big pig he killed.') - 'This boy killed a big pig.'
The subject marker should only be used in cases where ambiguity occurs. Subject markers are never used in sentences with intransitive verbs.
Interrogatives
Hiri Motu | Translation |
---|---|
Daika? | Who? Whom? |
Dahaka? | What? |
Daika ena? | Whose? |
Dahaka dainai?/Badina dahaka? | Why? |
Edeheto?/Edana bamona? | How? |
Hida? | How many? |
Edeseni?/Edeseni ai? | Where? |
Edana negai? | When? |
Edana is sometimes spelt and pronounced edena.
Hida always follows the noun it is referring to, while edana always follows it.
Questions should be asked affirmatively, as otherwise some of the answers received can be confusing.
For example, receiving the reply oibe ('yes') to the question la mai lasi? ('hasn't he come?') can mean 'Yes, he hasn't come yet'. If the person has arrived, the answer would be: Lasi, ia mai ('No, he has come').
Conjunctions
Hiri Motu | Translation |
---|---|
eiava | or |
bona | and |
bema | if |
bena, vadaeni | then |
a, to | but |
badina | because |
Examples:
- Oi raka namonamo, oi keto garina. ('Walk carefully, lest you fall.')
- Sinavai dekenai ia lao, haoda totona. ('He went to the river (in order) to catch fish.')
'To be' and 'to have'
When 'to be' is used as a connecting word, the particles na and be can be used and are interchangeable.
For example: Ia be mero namona or la na mero namona both mean 'he is a good boy'.
There is no Hiri Motu verb form of 'to have' in the sense of possession. In true Hiri Motu, a local would express that they have a dog with the phrase Lau na mai egu sisia for 'I have a dog', (literally, 'I with my dog'.) There are no standards for these expressions in Hiri Motu.
Numbers
The numbers 1–5 in Hiri Motu are, respectively, ta, rua, toi, hani, ima. The number system in Hiri Motu goes up to 100,000. Many of the numbers in Hiri Motu are
History
The language has a history pre-dating European contact; it developed among members of the
Since the early 1970s, if not earlier, the use of Hiri Motu as a day-to-day lingua franca in its old "range" has been gradually declining in favour of English and Tok Pisin. Today its speakers tend to be elderly and concentrated in Central and Gulf provinces. Younger speakers of the "parent language" (Motu proper) tend to be unfamiliar with Hiri Motu, and few of them understand or speak it well.
References
(1968) Percy Chatterton, A Grammar Of The Motu Language of Papua.
(1976) Dictionary Working Committee on Hiri Motu, The Dictionary and Grammar of Hiri Motu.
Notes
- ^ a b Hiri Motu at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ^ "Hiri Motu | language | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2022-04-28.
- ^ Specific legislation proclaiming official languages in Papua New Guinea seems not to exist – but see Constitution of Papua New Guinea: Preamble – Section 2/11 (literacy) – where Hiri Motu is mentioned (with Tok Pisin and English) as languages in which universal literacy is sought – and also section 67 2(c) (and 68 2(h), where conversational ability in Hiri Motu is mentioned (with Tok Pisin or “a vernacular of the country”) as a requirement for citizenship by nationalisation (one of these languages required)
- ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Hiri Motu Trading Eleman". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Hiri Motu Trading Koriki". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. - ^ a b Chatterton 1975
- ISBN 9780858831124.
- ^ a b Wurm & Harris 1963
- ^ This is disputed by Dutton.
Bibliography
- ISBN 9789980840073.
- Wurm, Stephen A.; Harris, J. B. (1963). Police Motu: an introduction to the trade language of Papua (New Guinea) for anthropologists and other fieldworkers. Pacific Linguistics Series B, No. 1. Canberra: Australian National University. ISBN 9780858830349.
- Lister-Turner, R and Clark, J.B. (1931), A Dictionary of the Motu Language of Papua, 2nd Edition (P. Chatterton, ed). Sydney, New South Wales: Government Printer.
- Brett, Richard; Brown, Raymond; Brown, Ruth and Foreman, Velma. (1962), A Survey of Motu and Police Motu. Ukarumpa, Papua New Guinea: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
- Chatterton, Percy (1975). Say it in Motu (PDF). Robert Brown & Associates (Qld) Pty Ltd.