122. Speaking Bislama & Nafsan

Speaking Tongues

Hello Language Lovers! Thank you for joining me for this episode of Speaking Tongues- the podcast in conversation with multilinguals. This week we’re having a conversation with Ana and Nick about Bialsma & Nafsan - two languages of Vanuatu.

Ana Krajinovic (Kra-yee-novich) & Nick Thieberger (Tee-berger) joined me in what I liked to call a 360 episode - Me being in NYC, Ana in Germany and Nick in Australia - how cool is that? In this episode, we talked about their work as linguists in the Pacific nation of Vanuatu. We learn how the Bislama language came to be named, how Bislama and Nafsan are constructed and how they are used among the 130 languages spoken by Ni-Vans in Vanuatu. Ana & Nick tell us about how they each came to studying these languages through their field work and Ana tells us some details about the specific grammar function that she focused on for her PhD. We even learn a linguistic similarity between Nafsan and Croatian. Who knew! Along the way, we also talk about changes in Nafsan and Bislama over generations, the culture of storytelling and concepts of self sufficiency in Vanuatu.

Thank you to Ana and Nick for sharing bits of your research and field work with all of us. If you enjoy episodes of Speaking Tongues, don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review the Speaking Tongues Podcast on Apple Podcasts and like and subscribe on YouTube so that other language lovers like ourselves can find the show! If you’ve been a long time listener of the show or a recent listener, you can now pledge ongoing support for the show on Buy Me a Coffee dot com or on Patreon dot com. For just $5 per month, you will have access to excerpts of this conversation that did not make it to the full published episode. And as you know, I wrote a book! My food ‘zine of international language and cuisine, Taste Buds Vol 1. is available now for purchase! Check social media for the sneak peek inside of the book and make sure you purchase for yourself and your friends! Links to all platforms are below! Ok, Let’s chat!

To Find Ana

https://anakrajinovic.com/

https://anakrajinovic.medium.com/

https://www.youtube.com/@anakrajinovic

To Find Nick

https://nthieberger.net/

https://www.paradisec.org.au/blog/

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