Australian Kriol
The pidgin died out in most parts of the country, except in the Northern Territory, where the contact between European settlers, Chinese people and other Asian groups, and the Aboriginal Australians in the northern regions has maintained a vibrant use of the language, which is spoken by about 30,000 people.
However, the control of lands was eventually seized by the settlers when a cattle company acquired much of the area.
The settlers became more determined to take full control of the land from the native people and carried out a campaign to do so.
Settlement finally succeeded in 1870 with the founding of Darwin, and an influx of both English and Chinese speakers followed.
By 1900, PJPE had developed into Northern Territory Pidgin English (NTPE), which was widespread and well understood.
Then, by 1908, NTPE would creolize into Australian Kriol,[7] starting first in the Roper River Mission (Ngukurr), where cattle stations and a township developed and spreading from there.
[6] This process of creolization entailed a massive increase in the lexicon as well as a complexification of the grammar of the language.
[8] The resettlements and land seizures that nearly annihilated the indigenous population were major factors in the development of Australian Kriol, as they created drastic social change.
[9] Another factor in the development of Kriol was the establishment of a community of Anglican missionaries in the Roper River region in 1908.
In fact, they tried to introduce Standard English as the official language for the mission, which the Aboriginal children used in class and with the missionaries, but Kriol still flourished.
In her first speech in April 2013, Josie Farrer spoke in both Kriol and Gija, marking the first ever use of an indigenous language in the Western Australian Parliament.
For a long time, people looked down on their Aboriginal heritage and viewed Kriol as an incorrect form of English that needed to be eradicated.
[8] Kriol varies on an Post-creole contiuum of dialects that are more similar to Australian Aboriginal English and those that differ more from it.
The first of these is a form of youth slang referred to as Strit tok (street talk) and it is usually considered to be a perversion of "good" Kriol.
[8] There is also a creole language based on a mix of Kriol and Gurindji called Gurndji Creole, which was formed by pervasive code switching between Kriol and Gurnidji by Gurnidji inhabitants of Victoria River District.
Kriol, unlike English, also uses a phonetic orthography in which words are spelled to match how they sound.
[13] Letters: A, B, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, Q, R, S, T, U, W, Y Consonant Digraphs: Ly, Ng, Ny, Rd, Rl, Rn, Rr, Rt, Sh, Th, Tj Vowel Digraphs: Ai, Au, Ei, Oi, Ou Punctuation Marks: Period (.
[14] In Australian Kriol, many spatial words from English have been transformed into suffixes attached to verbs they interact with.
[14] The primary contributing language of Kriol is English, but it has received and continues to receive influence from Chinese Pidgin English, Alawa, Marra, Ngalakgan, Wandarrang, Mangarrayi, Ngandi, Nunggubuyu, Jawoyn, Dalabon, Rembarrnga, Barunga, Jaminjung, Ngarinyman, Wardaman, Walmatjari, Djaru, Miriwoong, and Gija.
On 5 May 2007, the first complete edition of the Bible in the Kriol language was launched at Katherine in the Northern Territory.
