Wednesday 1 September 2010

Language.


The language of Tamba- Tamba is English.
From the day the mutineers set foot on the island right up until the present day, that is the way it has been.
Modern Tamba- Tamba English has been described as sounding somewhere between Australian English and the English of the Welsh Valleys, full of singsong rhythms and rising inflections . There is a smattering of loan words from the language of Wessel's island and a large number of slang words that are exclusive to Tamba- Tamba.
Academics at PROTT Academy have conducted studies into the so-called languages of other post colonial island communities and come to the conclusion that these various pidgins and creole languages are essentially of the same nature as Tamba- Tamba English. They have no standardised spelling and simple grammatical constructions, and if one looks at written approximations of speech the fact that they are English is readily identifiable.

Here are some examples:
Pitkern: About ye gwen? =Where are you going?
Torres: Dhis dhamba ya i prapa naiswan. = This bread is really nice (this damper here is a proper nice one).
Tamba- Tamba rendered in the same manner: Mi brar gorn arten hizbowt = my brother has gone out on his boat.

It's plain English!
You could render the same phrases spoken in many parts of England itself in a manner designed to give them the appearance of arcane, endangered lingos.
I asked PROTT Academy Professor of Linguistics Seymour Rowley for his views and his answer was emphatic : Tammermen hi tok right Inlish fershoe!

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