Norfolk Island-Pitcairn English: phonetics and phonology

What is Norfuk?

The label ‘Variety of English’, when applied to the ways of speaking of the descendants of the Bounty mutineers and their Tahitian spouses, is somewhat problematic, and the relationship of these to other varieties featuring in this volume is complex. Earlier judgments on the linguistic nature of the language (surveyed by Mühlhäusler 1998) vary considerably and include characterizations such as dialect of English, dialect of Beach-la-Mar, mixed language, patois, cant, pidgin and creole. A similar range of labels is encountered among present-day speakers, and there is no agreement among them whether the variety spoken on Pitcairn Island and Norfolk Island are varieties of English, one separate language, or two separate languages. It appears that the wish to distinguish Pitkern from Norfuk as two separate named languages is growing and we have conformed to this wish. We have also opted to concentrate on the varieties spoken on Norfolk Island, as this is where the vast majority of present-day speakers reside (about 900 as against 50 on Pitcairn) and Norfolk is where Mühlhäusler has conducted fieldwork over several years. Sociopolitical problems make fieldwork on Pitcairn impractical at the moment.

The difficulties experienced in obtaining an adequate characterization of Norfuk result from a number of factors.

(a) very patchy documentation

(b) Norfuk is not a focused language, where all community members agree on norms and standards, and what is called Norfuk ranges from forms that are mutually unintelligible with English, to others that differ only by a few stereotypical expressions.

(c) Both Pitkern and Norfuk have always been spoken side by side acrolectal varieties of English (British and Australian on Norfolk, British and American on Pitcairn). On Norfolk, standard British English until recently served as the role-model for educated islanders, and “murdering the King” was the local expression for speaking Norfuk. It is noted that some families spoke English only, whereas in other families, Norfuk was the preferred language.

(d) Code mixing is pervasive; there are virtually no examples, even from older conservative speakers, which do not involve code-switching.

(e) Norfuk has been an esoteric language, not readily accessible to outsiders. It has also been a stigmatized language with a long history of persecution by the education system.

At present, the Norfolk Islanders are in the process of deciding on questions such as language name, lexical and grammatical norms, writing system and social role. To turn a large number of individual ways of speaking into a language in the sense of a modern standard language is a difficult technical and political process which leaves much room for conflict. It would seem very unwise for an outsider to tell people what their language is, or what it should be. We have refrained from privileging any of the suggested orthographies, word-choices, word-meanings or grammatical structures. Normalizing the data at this point in the history of the language could do a great deal of damage and the reader is asked to forgive instances of inconsistency and vagueness on certain points.