Phoneme inventory

Solomon Islands Pijin has a basic phoneme inventory that accommodates the sounds of the lexifier language English, but is simpler than that of English in having fewer phonemes. This also makes the phonology of Solomon Islands Pijin more like that of the substrate languages (all except for eight of the languages spoken on the Solomon Islands are Austronesian languages) whose presence in the archipelago antedates that of English and of Pijin, and on which the sound system can be said to be mapped. Very clear influence from the various Austronesian vernaculars is found in the phonetics of Pijin, where there is a great deal of both regional and idiolectal variation that can often be linked to the speakers’ prior or other linguistic knowledge. There is also phonetic influence from English that is becoming apparent in some speakers of Taon Pijin (Pijin spoken in Honiara). We first describe the basic phoneme inventory, noting that it eschews uniform, unambiguous description. We then discuss further the range and type of variation that is actually found in the pronunciation of Pijin.