Bislama

Bislama (English /ˈbɪsləmɑː/; Bislama: [bislaˈma]) is a creole language, one of the official languages of Vanuatu. It is the first language of many of the "Urban ni-Vanuatu" (those who live in Port Vila and Luganville), and the second language of much of the rest of the country's residents. "Yumi, Yumi, Yumi", the Vanuatu national anthem, is in Bislama.

More than 95% of Bislama words are of English origin; the remainder combines a few dozen words from French, as well as some vocabulary inherited from various languages of Vanuatu, essentially limited to flora and fauna terminology. While the influence of these vernacular languages is low on the vocabulary side, it is very high in the morphosyntax. Bislama can be basically described as a language with an English vocabulary and an Oceanic grammar.

Currently there is no language pair in Apertium involving Bislama (see list of language pairs).

Grammars

• Terry Crowley, Bislama Reference Grammar (Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications) / University of Hawaii Press, 2004.
• Darrell T. Tryon, Bislama: An Introduction to the National Language of Vanuatu / Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, 1987.

Dictionaries

• Terry Crowley, A New Bislama Dictionary / Suva, Fiji : Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific; Villa, Vanuatu : Pacific Languages Unit, University of the South Pacific, 2003.

• William Greenwood Camden, A Descriptive Dictionary, Bislama to English / Maropa Bookshop, Villa, New Hebrides, 1977.

• BislamaSpellingDictionary-v1.1.pdf -- Compiled by Daryl Moon

Corpora

• Bislama version of Wikipedia
• Bislama Bible : BSP - BSSP Edition
• Wea Nao Stret Rod? / “Pilgrim’s Progress” : Skripja Yunon, Port Vila, Vanuatu, 1985.

Other

• Terry Crowley, Beach-la-Mar to Bislama: the emergence of a national language in Vanuatu / Clarendon Press, 1990.
• M Meyerhoff, Constraints on null subjects in Bislama (Vanuatu): social and linguistic factors / 2000.
• M Meyerhoff, Formal and cultural constraints on optional objects in Bislama / Cambridge University Press : Language Variation and Change, 2002.
• M Meyerhoff, Another look at the typology of serial verb constructions: The grammaticalisation of temporal relations in Bislama (Vanuatu) / Oceanic linguistics, 2001.
• Terry Crowley, Genesis of a preposition system in Bislama / Fifth International Conference in Austronesian, 1988.
• Terry Crowley, Serial verbs and prepositions in Bislama / Melanesian Pidgin and Tok Pisin: Proceedings of the First International Conference of Pidgins and Creoles in Melanesia : John Benjamins Publishing, 1990.
• M Meyerhoff, All the same? The emergence of complementizers in Bislama / TYPOLOGICAL STUDIES IN LANGUAGE, 2002
• M Meyerhoff, N Niedzielski, The syntax and semantics of olsem in Bislama / Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association III, 1996.