Not wishing to divert the thread, I feel obliged to remind Paul Burke that the lack of a corpus of literature would imply the 250 separate language groups used by nonBalanda Australians and the 750 separate languages in Papua New Guinea (all recognised as languages by the relevant linguistics experts) would not qualify. Should any of the speakers of these meet paul I'm sure they'd be happy to try and convince him of the errors of his ways. Smilingly.

Another earlier poster mentioned pidgin. I've forgotten the formal distinction between pidgin languages and creole languages but, in the Top End (where Aboriginal people will routinely speak at least four languages other than English) a creole has been used for cross-cultural communication for some time. When written, the emphasis has been on simplicity; this means that this language is called Kriol. And a white fella is called a Balanda, pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable and only the last "a" is long.

Great discussion folks! Much of my ancestry apparently came from the areas you're talking about, And I'm shortly being visited by my ex from 30-odd years ago who migrated to Switzerland and has had to cope with learninng the local lingo; I'll be able to understand her only if she speaks her mother tongue, however.

Cheers, Rowan