Vowels

The vowels of the various English dialects which supplied the lexical material to Pijin were reduced to a basic 5-cardinal-vowel system. Without study of the precise dialects of English that played a decisive role in the formation of Pijin, it is not possible to provide more than a few of the basic brushstrokes that determined adaptations to Solomon Islands Pijin phonology. The table of vowels below (Table 2) is meant as such a broad indication of some of the mergers and correspondences. Bold face vowels are those of both Pijin and English; this means that the normal font vowels had to merge with the bold face ones. These correspondences are set out below.