Unserdeutsch ('Our German'), or Rabaul Creole German, is a German-based creole language that originated in Papua New Guinea. It is described as a boarding school creole as it emerged among mixed-race children at a Catholic orphanage and school in Vunapope, a neighborhood of Kokopo. The children were educated in German and in contact with several other languages, mainly Tok Pisin which greatly influenced the creole.
Background The Gazelle Peninsula had become the most prosperous part of German New Guinea which brought along European traders and missionaries, who also brought along workers from other parts of the Pacific. From contact with these migrant workers and colonists with locals led to the mixed-children, who were at one point were called "Vunapope Germans" or the "Mission Mixed-Race Community." 1898, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart and the Sisters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart established a boarding school and orphanage at Vunapope for these children.
Contact these children had with German speakers and the languages of their parents (Immigrant languages such as Cantonese, Tagalog, Trukese, Malay, and a host of indigenous languages of Papua New Guinea) helped develop Unserdeutsch. The student-pupil relationship allowed enough social distancing to enable to a common language to develop among the students, influenced also by the missionaries, who emphasised the separateness of German and languages the children encountered outside of school.
German was the language of instruction in Catholic mission schools, which is where the language originated, and children residing in a German-run orphanage later used the language regularly outside of their classrooms. The language developed into a first language for some when these children had families of their own. Oral stories tell a version that Unserdeutsch originated by children sharing stories where they used German vocabulary with Tok Pisin grammar, this change in language is referred to as relexification.Volker 1991
The majority of Unserdeutsch speakers and their families migrated to Australia after Papua New Guinea's independence in 1975. During fieldwork conducted by researchers between 2014 and 2017, there were about 100 speakers found in Australia and around 10 speakers found in Papua New Guinea. The language is no longer learned as a first language.
Most speakers of Unserdeutsch are bilingual; speaking either Standard German, English, Tok Pisin or Kuanua. Most surviving speakers are middle-aged or older, although younger members of the community may comprehend the language. Unserdeutsch is likely a descendant of a pidginised form of Standard German which originated in the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain during German colonial times among the Catholic mixed-race (Vunapope) community. With increased mobility and intermarriage, it has been disappearing in the last few decades.
Unserdeutsch presumably influenced the development of its neighbour, Tok Pisin. Unlike Namibian Black German in Namibia, it is a creole; indeed, it is the only creole that developed from colonial German.John Holm, 1989, Pidgins and Creoles, vol. 2: Reference Survey
Further, Unserdeutsch is only composed of three characteristics: movement rules, questions and question words, according to Bickerton and his bioprogram hypothesis. + Examplealleboy-srausschuvhimboatPLboy-PLget.outshoveTRboatGermanEnglishGermanGer/EngEnglishEnglish 'Everybody get out, shove the boat!'
Phonology Volkner (1982) described a great deal of variation in Unserdeutsch's phonology with an acrolect, mesolects, and basilect. Speakers born before 1950 were educated in Standard German and are able to shift between the acrolect and basilect. He also described Unserdeutsch's phonology as being similar to northern German dialects, with only a slight influence from Tok Pisin and English. He further described Unserdeutsch as having a nine-unit vowel system with long and short forms, which is rare for a creole language, and that most consonants from German were maintained.
Lindenfelser and Maintz (2017) later wrote that the basilectal form had a much smaller phoneme inventory than German and that it was largely based off Tok Pisin. They described a five-unit vowel system with three vowel heights, which is typical of a creole language, and that though the vowels have differing amounts of opening, this variation isn't phonologically distinctive. They also described the consonants as deriving primarily from Tok Pisin and that only three consonants specific to German were preserved / /. Lindenfelser and Maintz did agree that Unserdeutsch is influenced by northern German dialects, linking it to a Westphalian-Rhenisch spoken koine. +Volkner (1982) ConsonantsLabialDental/AlveolarPostalveolarPalatalVelarGlottalNasalPlosivevoicelessvoicedAffricateFricativevoicelessvoiced(ʒ)ApproximantwRhotic Volkner noted these phonological changes of German consonants in Unserdeutsch:
Voiced stops at the end of words in German can become voiceless due to grammatical changes, in Unserdeutsch this only occurs with /b/ Final /t/ or /d/ are deleted, the exception of a few words Final /g/ never becomes /k/, though it may become /ç/ or deleted Clusters /ts/ and /pf/ became /s/ and /f/ /d/ is deleted before /ə/ Where /n/ would have been before a deleted /d/ now becomes /ŋ/ /ŋ/ can followed by an extra consonant, usually /k/ or /j/ /ʒ/ only occurred in English loan words /x/ only appeared in some words and was replaced in by /ç/ in all others Medial /ç/ becomes /h/ and final /ç/ is deleted or becomes /k/ Clusters containing /ʃ/ have an initial /s/ added if the cluster contains /r/ or word finally German /z/ is non-existent in Unserdeutsch, though some speakers pronounced it in some English loan words Where German had /v/, it has become /w/ though speakers could hypercorrect leading to use of /v/ in English words that normally have /w/ LabialDental/AlveolarPostalveolarPalatalVelarGlottalNasalPlosivevoicelessvoicedAffricateFricativevoicelessvoicedApproximantwRhotic Lindenfelser and Maintz described that the German consonants /ç χ pf ts ʁ/ʀ z/ were absent or substituted in the following ways in Unserdeutsch:
[ç] became [h] or was deleted, Kirche became [kirhɛ] [χ] became [h] or was deleted, lachen became [lahɛn] [pf] became [f], Pflanzung became [flansuŋ] [ts] became [s] zusammen became [susamɛn] [ʁ/ʀ] became [r] trinken became [triŋkɛn] [z] became [s] diese/dieser/dieses all became [disɛ]
Vowels Volkner described Unserdeutsch as having short and long vowels, but that they were considerably shorter than in Standard German, so that a long vowel in Unserdeutsch is in between a Standard German short and long vowel and a short vowel is shorter than that of Standard German. Vowel length in an Unserdeutsch word is nearly always the same as that of the corresponding German word.
Unserdeutsch's vowel phonemes as described in 1982: FrontCentralBackCloseɪ y ɨ ʊMide ø əo Open Some changes of German vowels in Unserdeutsch are noted as:
The German phonemes /ʏ/, /ɛː/, and /œ/ merged with /y/, /ɛ/, and /ø/ respectively. This was universal in Unserdeutsch. Influence from English and Tok Pisin had caused /y/ to become /i/ in several common words of the basilect. An influence from Tok Pisin and Papuan languages has to led to a lack of distinction between /i/ and /ɪ/. A hypercorrection of /ʊ/ to /y/ in some speakers. As in German and English the schwa /ə/ is found in unaccented syllables and like in German it is pronounced /ɛ/ or /e/ when the syllable is stressed. A feature from Tok Pisin is an epenthetic vowel /ɨ/, which is placed in between the consonants in some words, so that German klein is pronounced /kɨlain/.
Lindenfelser and Maintz described Unserdeutsch's vowels as largely the same as Tok Pisin, with /ɛ/ instead of /e/. German long vowels were shortened and umlaut vowels were delabialised, so that /y/ and /ʏ/ became /i/ and /ø/ became /ɛ/. German reduction vowels /ɐ/ and /ə/ were replaced by /ɛ/. FrontBackCloseMidoOpen
Grammar
Unserdeutsch is typical of creole languagesLindenfelser, Siegwalt and Peter Maitz (2017). "The Creoleness of Unserdeutsch (Rabaul Creole German): A Typological Perspective". Journal of the Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea special issue 2017: 108. in that it reflects the lexicon of one language overlaid upon a substrate grammar – in this case German and Tok Pisin, respectively.Maitz, Peter, et al (2019). "Unserdeutsch (Rabaul Creole German), Papua New Guinea." Unpublished manuscript, University of Augsburg, p. 11. Grammatically, Unserdeutsch bears many similarities to L2 varieties of German, suggesting incomplete language acquisition on the part of students in the German-speaking colony.Maitz and Volker 2017, p. 377. Grammatically, Unserdeutsch morphology adheres to "average" creole characteristics,Lindenfelser and Maitz 2017, p. 131. but because Unserdeutsch was never formally standardized, being used only informally as an in-group register, there is an unusually high degree of grammatical variation among speakers of Unserdeutsch, both between familial groups and individual speakers.Maitz et al 2019, p. 10.
More recently, Australian English has also influenced the language in several ways. Certain syntactic constructions appear to have been borrowed directly from English,Volker, Craig (1989). "Rabaul Creole German Syntax." Working Paper in Linguistics 21(1): 157. including an English-like passive voice construction utilizing a copula.Volker 1991, p. 144. Both of these features are generally rare in creole languages, which indicates an early, pervasive English influence that might have included conscious modeling of English sentence structure.
Sentence structure Unserdeutsch word order is rigidly SVO and lacks the V2 constituent order of subordinate clauses found in Standard German.Maitz et al 2019, p. 11. This tendency extends even to imperative sentences and yes/no questions, which demonstrates a strong substrate influence from Tok Pisin.
Furthermore, even WH-fronting is optional in Unserdeutsch, and these types of interrogatives often come at the end of a sentence, as in Tok Pisin, rather than at the beginning as in Standard German or English.Maitz et al 2019, p. 18. However, some speakers prefer to use a German-modeled sentence pattern in which the interrogative is in head position.
Where would you go?
Why do you have to die?Lindenfelser and Maitz 2017, p. 121.
The use of either construction appears variable among speakers of Unserdeutsch.
Nouns Unserdeutsch nouns are derived almost exclusively from the German lexicon,Volker, Craig (1982). An Introduction to Rabaul Creole German (Unserdeutsch). unpublished Master thesis, University of Queensland, p. 31. but noun morphology is much less synthetic than Standard German. Unserdeutsch nouns do not change to indicate grammatical gender or case, nor is there overt plural marking.
Number Rather than taking specific singular and plural forms, as in Standard German, Unserdeutsch nouns are pluralized almost exclusively by the pronominal marker alle, unless plurality is already indicated by a numeral or pronoun, in which case it is omitted entirely.Volker 1982, p. 31. Thus, most nouns in Unserdeutsch are pluralized as in the following example:
He drew the blueprints for the construction of the houses.Lindenfelser and Maitz 2017, p. 103.
There are few frequently used nouns which retain Standard German plural forms and are thus double-marked for plural. These irregular forms are retained perhaps owing to frequency of use.Lindenfelser and Maitz 2017, p. 104.
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