Vanuatu Local Custom Tips by kooka3

Carvings are everywhere, so keep looking for them. Carvings are made out of hardwoods, tree ferns, and sometimes stones. Wood is used for more utilitarian types of things like bowls, platters, and decorative items like turtles and birds.

More interesting, though, are the humanoid figures carved from tree ferns, a ver soft substance. (You can also find these figures from hardwoods, but they are less common than tree-ferns aroudn town).

The stone carvings are much smaller, and are often made out of volcanic pumice stone or coral.

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There are 113 distinct languages and many more dialects are found throughout Vanuatu - many of the Ni-Vanuatu speak more than one of these local languages becasue of inter- and intra-island trading. When Europeans arrived, a lingua franca evolved. It's name, Bislama, derived from the Bech-der-mer (sea cucumber) traders who developed a form of pidgin English throughout the Pacific. It began as a simplified form of phonetic English, with Spanish, French, and other languages thrown in for good measure.It soon took on a life of its own, incorporating new words and evolving.

Bislama, though phonetically English with a broad acccent, is grammatically simpler. Everything, including women, are spoke of in the masculan (political correctness has not yet come into play!) Being a simpler language means that complex ideas or new concepts are described functionally. The results are descriptions and stories can be a great deal longer than if told in English.

Blong: literally - belong. It is used in reference to any noun which has a possesive relationship with any other noun. Example:
Long: literally meaning from, to, in, on; in association with something, but not in possesive sense.. Example:

* Pikikini blong mi = literally: child belong to me (my child)
* pikinini blong kanu = literally: the child (the outrigger) belonging to the canoe
* Laet blong trak = literally: light belong to the truck, a light on a truck
* Pikinini i go long skul = literally: the child goes to school

Most object groupings are simplified: all motorised vehicles are truks, all birds are pidjins, all creatures in the sea are fis. To distinguish the differences in these groupings, their relationship to size or the enviroment is used, or a description is given, rather than a distinctive name:
* trak blong doti = truck belong dirty (garbage truck)
* pidgin blong solwota = bird belonging to the saltwater, eg tern, pelican, duck etc.
* kaofis = cow fish (dugong)

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