Motu love poem

Love poem translated into Motu (Western Motu, Pure Motu, True Motu, Eastern Motu), Melanesian language of the Papuan tip, spoken by 40,000 speakers. If you go to her place, perhaps you will see my poem, translated into motu, printed upside down, placed beside her bed, on her little table. She keep it for months, waiting each morning at dawn for the moment when heaven looks at her. The pidgin of motu is called hiri motu, despite a similar vocabulary, intercomprehension is impossible. It is on the side of Port Moresby which is the capital of the country that we find this language which serves as a language of relation in this region.

With the tok pisin, the motu is an important language of Papua, because spoken by an important number of people. Early missionaries attempted to learn motu, but it was later apparent that what the local taught them was just a simplified version. That suggests, that the foreigner talk is important in the formation of pigdins (se my page about haitian creole, which explains it). Motu, because of tok pisin which is more and more talk, become less used.

The Motu spoken in Port Moresby and its surroundings, had been the language adopted by missionaries to evangelize this region in the 19th century. If the local populations first taught them a form of pigin, gradually this pigin was replaced by Motu. Subsequently, with the expansion of evangelism to neighboring areas, the Motu brought by the missionaries became the lingua franca ... so, today the Motu is the second language of several thousand people.

I like all these Papuan languages. This country which is at the opposite of France on the world map, makes us dream with all the unknown it conceals. One day, shall I spend some time in the remotest mountains of this country to share the daily life of a tribe not touched by the contributions of colonizers? I hope! it would be fabulous, there would be so much to learn from survival under so difficult conditions for a European, with so simple and old means.