| Hiri Motu | |
|---|---|
| Police Motu | |
| Region | Papua New Guinea |
Native speakers | "Very few" (cited 1992)[1] 100,000 L2 speakers (2021)[1] |
| Latin script | |
| Official status | |
Official language in | Papua New Guinea |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | ho |
| ISO 639-2 | hmo |
| ISO 639-3 | hmo |
| Glottolog | hiri1237 |
Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of its capital city, Port Moresby.[2]
It is a simplified version of Motu, from the Austronesian language family. Although it is strictly neither a pidgin nor a creole, it possesses some features from both language types. Phonological and grammatical differences make Hiri Motu not mutually intelligible with Motu. The languages are lexically very similar, and retain a common, albeit simplified, Austronesian syntactical basis. It has also been influenced to some degree by Tok Pisin.
Even in the areas where it was once well established as a lingua franca, the use of Hiri Motu has been declining in favour of Tok Pisin and English for many years. The language has some statutory recognition.[note 1]
- ^ a b Hiri Motu at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ^ "Hiri Motu | language | Britannica". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 28 April 2022.
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