Having lived in Papua New Guinea twice while growing up, I have a certain fondness for the language Tok Pisin (to you Inglis speakers, just pronounce it the same as “pidgeon”). I can’t really speak much of it, but I can understand a fair bit when my Dad gets started (incidentally, he went back to PNG for a visit in June, and after 30 years he could still hold his own when talking with the locals).

You’ve got to love a language where “gras” means “hair”, “bagarap” means pretty much the same thing if you say it out loud in English, and while expressing how full your tummy is after a good meal you accidentally say you’re pregnant.

So it was with great delight that I discovered that there is an edition of Wikipedia in Tok Pisin, it can be found here:

http://tpi.wikipedia.org/

It has about 850 articles (compared to over three million in English) but it is wonderful stuff. I can’t understand any of it, but wonderful all the same.

Here’s a picture of me with my wantok, age four. See if you can pick me out.