Nupela Testamen bilong bikpela Jisas Kraist = New Testament in New Guinea Pidgin

Canberra & Port Moresby: The British and Foreign Bible Society of Australia, 1969. First edition, 7½" x 5½", pp. 861, [1]; text in double column on India paper; 3 maps, illustrations in the text; original limp blue leatherette stamped in white on upper cover and spine; fine. Inscribed in Pidgin by a SVD (i.e. Societas Verbi Divini - Society of the Divine Word) missionary Padre Francesco Mihalic, and dated Wewak, July, 1969. Wewak is the capital of the East Sepik province of Papua New Guinea. Father Frank Mihalic SVD was originally sent to Papua New Guinea in 1948. In 1957 he standardized the language that’s most commonly used in Papua New Guinea today and compiled the first English lexicon of Toks Pisin, a form of Melanesian Pidgin English that is one of the country’s three official languages. The Pennsylvania native would write many more Pidgin dictionaries and grammar books, as well as a history of Divine Word Missionaries in Papua New Guinea. In 1981, Fr. Frank Mihalic was awarded the Order of the British Empire for “services rendered to Pidgin.” He also received an honorary doctorate of linguistics from the University of Papua New Guinea. Fr. Mihalic retired to the Divine Word Missionaries residence in Riverside, California, where he died in 2001 (see SVDmissions[.]org). (Inventory #: 69037)