letters, five of which are vowels, and four digraphs. The letters are (vowels in bold): a, b, d, e, f, g, h, i, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, v, w, y The four digraphs note diphthongs, as well as certain consonants: , , and (used for both and ) Phonology Tok Pisin, like many pidgins and creoles, has a simpler phonology than the superstrate language. It has 17 consonants and 5 vowels. However, this varies with the local substrate languages and the level of education of the speaker. The following is the "core" phonemic inventory, common to virtually all varieties of Tok Pisin. More educated speakers, and/or those where the substrate language(s) have larger phoneme inventories, may have as many as 10 distinct vowels. Nasal plus plosive offsets lose the plosive element in Tok Pisin e.g. English hand becomes Tok Pisin . Furthermore, voiced plosives become voiceless at the ends of words, so that English pig is rendered as in Tok Pisin. Consonants Where symbols appear in pairs the one to the left represents a voiceless consonant. Voiced plosives are pronounced by many speakers (especially of Melanesian backgrounds) as prenasalized plosives. , , and can be either dental or alveolar consonants, while is only alveolar. In most Tok Pisin dialects, the phoneme is pronounced as the alveolar tap or flap, . Vowels Tok Pisin has five pure vowels: Grammar The verb has a suffix, (< Eng. him) to indicate transitivity (, "look"; , "see"). But some verbs, such as "eat", can be transitive without it. Tense is indicated by the separate words Future (< Eng. by and by) and (past) (< Eng. been). The present progressive tense is indicated by the word – e.g. "He is eating". The noun does not indicate number, though pronouns do. Adjectives usually take the suffix (now often pronounced , though more so for pronouns, and for adjectives; from "fellow") when modifying nouns; an exception is "little". It is also found on numerals and determiners: Tok Pisin: → Eng. "one" Tok Pisin: → Eng. "two" Tok Pisin: → Eng. "this bloke" Pronouns show person, number, and clusivity. The paradigm varies depending on the local languages; dual number is common, while the trial is less so. The largest Tok Pisin pronoun inventory is, Reduplication is very common in Tok Pisin. Sometimes it is used as a method of derivation; sometimes words