Torres Strait Creole

Torres Strait Creole has six main dialects: Papuan, Western-Central, TI, Malay, Eastern, and Cape York.

Its main characteristics show that it is a Pacific Pidgin, but the future in X [i] go VERB aligns it with Atlantic Creoles.

Related languages are Pijin of the Solomon Islands, Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea, and Bislama of Vanuatu.

Apart from accent and intonation, differences are mainly vocabulary used for local fauna, flora and so on, retentions from local indigenous languages or other substrata languages (such as Malay) and minor differences in pronunciation because of substrata influences.

Torres Strait Creole exists as part of a lect continuum: a local language (Kalaw Kawaw Ya), a local language mix called Ap-ne-Ap, a pidgin basilect creole, a mesolect English influenced creole, local Torres Strait (Thursday Island) English, and General Australian English, as this example shows: The 2016 Australian census recorded 6,171 people who spoke Yumplatok at home,[9] but linguists working on the language have estimated that from 20,000 to 30,000 Indigenous Australians spoke it as their first language in 2010.

The dental-alveolar contrast exists in the Western, Central and Cape York dialects, however only exists in other dialects in so far as either English or Western-Central influences force a contrast, or where the voiced alveolar stop ⟨d⟩ realises as the rhotic tap ⟨r⟩ (e.g. Western-Central wasamada 'what's the matter/what's wrong', Eastern/Papuan wasamara).

The consonants ⟨t⟩, ⟨d⟩, ⟨m⟩, ⟨n⟩, ⟨l⟩, ⟨w⟩, ⟨y⟩ and ⟨ng⟩ do not have any major allophonic variation, while ⟨r⟩ varies between ɾ and r (particularly when syllable final), and in songs is often pronounced ɹ.

Where the Eastern dialect is concerned, the dental-alveolar contrast is on the whole non-operative, and the dual forms are less commonly used than elsewhere.

There are singular, dual and plural forms: The demonstrative articles have a general form, and a specific dual form, as well as variation, with a strong tendency to use the clitics iya and dhea to specify position; the definitie articles are often used with the demonstrative clitics to express the demonstrative articles: Torres Strait Creole is a somewhat atypical of Pidgin-Creole languages in its word order and various other syntactic (and grammatical) properties.

Though the normal sentence word order is the expected transitive S-V-O-X(-) and intransitive S-V-X(-), there is variation in the form of S-X-V(-O), such as where the directional adverbs dhe 'there' and ia/ya 'here' come before the verb, as happens in all local languages (this is in common with virtually all verb tense/aspect/mood markers in the language).

Verb clause strings are normal in the language: The four sentences in Torres Strait Creole carry a semantic difference difficult to show in the English translation.

All these versions exist in everyday speech, as illustrated by tek 'take': intransitive-antipassive tek, transitive-passive teke, teki em, tekyem, tekem: The development of a full passive using this form also exists: If the verb stem has e or a diphthong, then the transitive suffix is -e; if i or u, then it can become -i, while of the stem contains a or o, the suffix can become -a.

These are not to be confused with transitive clauses: Four derivational suffixes exist which add aspectual meaning to verb stems.

Though their origin are English intransitive prepositions, in Torres Strait Creole their status is completely aspectual; they can only be used as suffixes.

The little girl is afraid that the dog will bite her lo, prom — comparative (dialect variation): Dhis dhangal ia i mò big prom/lo nadhawan dhea This dugong is bigger than that one.

We: relative clause Aus we Ama i stap i antap lo il we i gad wan big mango.

Òl pipol we i wande gud wòk i mas lane ingglis Everyone who wants a good job has to learn English.

Waze (òlsem): in order, so that ze em i ken luk òl wòk blo yumi.

Here are lists of Non-English words found in Torres Strait Creole: Kalaw Kawaw Ya: yawo 'goodbye', matha 'only, very', mina 'really, truly', babuk 'crosslegged', aka 'granny', puripuri 'magic action, spells, products, medicines etc.'

Meriam Mir: baker (bakìr) 'money' (beside the more general baks), watai (wathai) 'bamboo break-wind fence'.

): thalinga 'ear', bala 'brother, male friend', thuba 'coconut toddy', makan 'eat', dudu 'sit', kaikai 'eat', nene 'granny', datho, 'grandfather', thawian 'brother-in-law'.