| Also Known As: Torres Strait Pidgin,Torres Strait Broken,Cape York Creole,Lockhart Creole,West Torres,Torres Strait Creole
Description:
Torres Strait Creole (also Torres Strait Pidgin, Torres Strait Brokan/Broken, Cape York Creole, Lockhart Creole, Papuan Pidgin English, Broken English, Brokan/Broken, Blaikman, Big Thap) is an English-based creole language spoken on several Torres Strait Islands (Queensland, Australia), Northern Cape York and South-Western Coastal Papua. It has approximately 25 000 mother-tongue and bi/tri-lingual speakers, as well as several second/third-language speakers. It is widely used as a language of trade and commerce. It has five main dialects: Papuan, Western-Central, TI, Eastern, and Cape York. Its main characteristics show that it is a Pacific Pidgin, however the future in X [i] go VERB aligns it with Atlantic Creoles. Related languages are Pijin of the Solomon Islands, Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea, and Bislama of Vanuatu. The other Creoles of Australia (Roper River Kriol etc.) are more distantly related, being descendants of the Pidgin English that developed in and around Sydney after the colonisation of Australia.
Records of a pidgin English being used in Torres Strait exist at least from the 1840s (e.g. Moore 1979), and therefore Torres Strait Creole may very well be older than its..... full article at Wikipedia |
