Looking through a little book by Phillip C.S. Fong written in Pidgin English, Papua New Guinea Igat Gutpela Marasin Tu, I discovered a hiccup cure. Papua New Guinea’s Pidgin is an official language, although simple and based on English, you may find you can understand it if you look at it long enough! Or just read it out loud and suddenly it will start to make sense! One tip is that you generally pronounce ‘e’ as ‘eh’. ‘Save’ for example means to know and the last e is pronounced as ‘eh’. ‘Me no save’ for example means ‘I don’t know’.

Marasin Bilong Hiccup (Medicine for hiccups)

Em is save wokim nek bilong you krai olsem HUK, HUK, HUK, na i wok long mikim yu olsem tasol. Na sapos em ino malolo long mikim yu olsem long tu o tri wik, em iken kilim yu.

(If your throat won’t stop hiccuping for two or three weeks you can die). Side note! My pidgin isn’t that great, so there is probably a better translation possible, but you can get the gist…

Em despela ken marasin
Suka o Honey
Suka em i bilong tanim ti o kopi
Honey em i bilong rapim antap long bret o wara bilong dring

Yu Ken Usim Olsem

1. Kisim wan kap kilin wara.
2. Putim tu ot tri ti sipun suka o honey insait long despela kap wara, na yu ken dringim em.
3. Orait despila hiccup bambai i pinis nau.

Despela kain wok ol taim mi save wokim ol pikinini na bik pela man long em, na ol ikam orait tasol.

(Use two or three teaspoons of honey in water and drink it and your hiccups will stop. He says it works with kids or adults.)

I will have to try it. I haven’t had hiccups in a while, but I do know a few people who can’t seem to stop once they get hiccups, so will have to keep this cure in mind. My grandma always said a teaspoon of sugar was the way to go and I have always found that it worked straight away, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this worked.