And interestingly, the future of their existence lies with the children of this generation.
April Hope, a Language Surveyor with Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) PNG says teaching children tokples (mother tongue) will go a long way towards preserving this country's diverse languages and cultures.
“Children are amazing language-learners, and it will be much easier for them to learn to speak their tokples fluently if that's the language their parents speak to them every day in their homes,” she says.
