The word tok means 'word' or 'speech' as in 'talk', and pisin means 'pidgin'. Other names for the language include New Guinea Pidgin, Melanesian Pidgin English or Neo-Melanesian. Tok Pisin started out as a Pidgin - a simple contact language used by people who didn't share a common language. Over time is has evolved and become a creole acquiring more complex grammar in the process. The majority of Tok Pisin vocabulary comes from English, though it also includes words from German, Portuguese and a number of Austronesian languages such as Tolai and Malay.