words in Bislama are "long" and "blong", which take the place of many prepositions in English or French. "Long" Long as 'next to', 'by', 'beside' etc. Stoa long haos The store next to the house. long as 'at' or 'to' Mi bin stap long ples ia bifo I have been to this place before. Mi stap long stoa I am at the store. long as 'in' Jea long haos The chair in the house. Long holds many other related meanings, and is sometimes used in improvisation. "Blong" Originally from the English word "belong", blong takes the place of 'of' or the genitive case in other languages. Just like of in English, it is one of the most widely used and versatile words in the language, and can indicate possession, country of origin, defining characteristics, intention, and others. Buk blong mi The book that belongs to me, my book Man blong Amerika Man from America, American. Hemi woman blong saiens She is a woman of science, She is a scientist. Man blong dring Man of drinking i.e. a drinker Verbs Verbs in Bislama usually consist of a stem word (borrowed from English, French or indigenous languages); most transitive verbs add to this a transitive suffix. The form of that suffix is /-em/, /-im/, or /-um/, depending on vowel harmony. If the last vowel of the verb's stem is either -u- or -i-, then that vowel will normally be copied into the transitive suffix – however, there are rare exceptions. For all other stem vowels, the transitive suffix has its default form /-em/: Note that exceptions exist, such as lukim ("look"). Examples of transitive verbs which exceptionally don't take this suffix include: kakae 'eat, bite'; trink 'drink'; save 'know'; se 'say'. Verbs do not conjugate. The tense, aspect and mood of a sentence are indicated with markers such as stap, bin and bae that are placed in the sentence. Mi stap kakae taro I'm eating taro Mi bin kakae taro I have eaten taro Bae mi kakae taro I will eat taro Nouns The plural is formed by putting ol before the word. For example, bia 'beer'; ol bia = "beers". Ol comes from the English "all". When used with numbers, the singular form is used. 2 bia, 3 bia, etc. Pronouns The personal pronouns of Bislama closely resemble those of Tok Pisin. They feature four grammatical numbers (singular, dual, trial and