Editing Tok Pisin (section)

==Classification==
The Tok Pisin language is a result of Pacific Islanders intermixing, when people speaking numerous different languages were sent to work on plantations in Queensland and various islands (see [[South Sea Islander]] and [[blackbirding]]). The labourers began to develop a pidgin, drawing vocabulary primarily from English, but also from [[German language|German]], [[Malay language|Malay]], [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]], and their own [[Austronesian languages]] (perhaps especially [[Kuanua language|Kuanua]], that of the [[Tolai people|Tolai]] people of [[East New Britain]]).

This English-based pidgin evolved into Tok Pisin in [[German New Guinea]] (where the German-based creole [[Unserdeutsch language|Unserdeutsch]] was also spoken). It became a widely used lingua franca and language of interaction between rulers and ruled, and among the ruled themselves who did not share a common vernacular. Tok Pisin and the closely related [[Bislama]] in [[Vanuatu]] and [[Pijin]] in the [[Solomon Islands]], which developed in parallel, have traditionally been treated as varieties of a single Melanesian Pidgin English or "Neo-Melanesian" language. The flourishing of the mainly English-based Tok Pisin in German New Guinea (despite the language of the metropolitan power being German) contrasts with [[Hiri Motu]], the lingua franca of [[Territory of Papua|Papua]], which was derived not from English but from [[Motu language|Motu]], the vernacular of the indigenous people of the [[Port Moresby]] area.