Hawaiian Pidgin
Encyclopedia
Hawaii Pidgin English, Hawaii Creole English, HCE, or simply Pidgin
, is a creole language
based in part on English
used by many "local" residents of Hawaii
. Although English and Hawaiian
are the co-official languages of the state of Hawaii, Pidgin is used by many Hawaii residents in everyday conversation and is often used in advertising toward Hawaii residents. The new ISO 639-3
language code for Hawaii Pidgin (Hawaii Creole English) is
Hawaiian
used on the plantations and elsewhere in Hawaii. It has been influenced by many languages, including Portuguese
, Hawaiian, and Cantonese. As people of other language backgrounds were brought in to work on the plantations, such as Japanese
, Filipinos
, and Koreans, Pidgin acquired words from these languages. Japanese loanwords in Hawaii
lists some of those words originally from Japanese. It has also been influenced to a lesser degree by Spanish
spoken by Mexican
and Puerto Rican
settlers in Hawaii. Even today, Pidgin retains some influences from these languages. For example, the word "stay" in Pidgin has a form and use similar to the Portuguese or Spanish verb "estar", which means "to be" but is used when referring to a temporary state or location.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, Pidgin started to be used outside the plantation between ethnic groups. Public school children learned Pidgin from their classmates, and eventually it became the primary language of most people in Hawaii, replacing the original languages. For this reason, linguist
s generally consider Hawaiian Pidgin to be a creole language
.
Forms used for SAE "to be":
Note that these constructions also mimic the grammar of the Hawaiian language. In Hawaiian, "nani ka pēpē" or "kiuke ka pēpē" is literally "cute, the baby" and is perfectly correct Hawaiian grammar meaning in English: "The baby is cute."
For tense
-marking of verb
, auxiliary verb
s are employed:
or
For more information on grammar, also see Sakoda & Siegel (References, below) and the Pidgin Coup paper (External links, below).
and Lee Tonouchi
. A Pidgin translation of the New Testament
(called Da Jesus Book) has also been created, as has an adaptation of William Shakespeare
's Twelfth Night, or What You Will
, titled in Pidgin "Twelf' Night, or Whateva."
Several theater companies in Hawaii produce plays written and performed in Pidgin. The most notable of these companies is Kumu Kahua Theater.
Pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...
, is a creole language
Creole language
A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
based in part on English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
used by many "local" residents of Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
. Although English and Hawaiian
Hawaiian language
The Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii...
are the co-official languages of the state of Hawaii, Pidgin is used by many Hawaii residents in everyday conversation and is often used in advertising toward Hawaii residents. The new ISO 639-3
ISO 639-3
ISO 639-3:2007, Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 3: Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of languages, is an international standard for language codes in the ISO 639 series. The standard describes three‐letter codes for identifying languages. It extends the ISO 639-2...
language code for Hawaii Pidgin (Hawaii Creole English) is
hwc. In the Hawaiian language, "Hawaiian Creole English" is called "ōlelo pai ai," which literally means "pounding-taro language."History
Pidgin (or Hawaii Creole) originated as a form of communication used between English speaking residents and non-English speaking immigrants in Hawaii. It supplanted the pidginPidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...
Hawaiian
Hawaiian language
The Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii...
used on the plantations and elsewhere in Hawaii. It has been influenced by many languages, including Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Hawaiian, and Cantonese. As people of other language backgrounds were brought in to work on the plantations, such as Japanese
Ethnic Japanese
Ethnic Japanese may mean:* Japanese people, when referring to people of Japanese descent** May also be used as a term to refer to the Yamato people as opposed to the minority peoples of Japan: the Ainu, Ryukyuans, Burakumin and immigrant groups such as the Han Chinese and Koreans.* Japanese...
, Filipinos
Filipino people
The Filipino people or Filipinos are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the islands of the Philippines. There are about 92 million Filipinos in the Philippines, and about 11 million living outside the Philippines ....
, and Koreans, Pidgin acquired words from these languages. Japanese loanwords in Hawaii
Japanese loanwords in Hawaii
Many loanwords in Hawaiian Pidgin derive from the Japanese language. The linguistic influences of the Japanese in Hawaii began with the first immigrants from Japan in 1868 and continue with the large Japanese American population in Hawaii today.The following lists three categories of Japanese...
lists some of those words originally from Japanese. It has also been influenced to a lesser degree by Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
spoken by Mexican
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
and Puerto Rican
Puerto Rican people
A Puerto Rican is a person who was born in Puerto Rico.Puerto Ricans born and raised in the continental United States are also sometimes referred to as Puerto Ricans, although they were not born in Puerto Rico...
settlers in Hawaii. Even today, Pidgin retains some influences from these languages. For example, the word "stay" in Pidgin has a form and use similar to the Portuguese or Spanish verb "estar", which means "to be" but is used when referring to a temporary state or location.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, Pidgin started to be used outside the plantation between ethnic groups. Public school children learned Pidgin from their classmates, and eventually it became the primary language of most people in Hawaii, replacing the original languages. For this reason, linguist
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
s generally consider Hawaiian Pidgin to be a creole language
Creole language
A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
.
Pronunciation
Pidgin has distinct pronunciation differences from standard American English (SAE). Some key differences include the following:- The voicedVOICEDVirtual Organization for Innovative Conceptual Engineering Design is a virtual organization that promotes innovation in engineering design. This project is the collaborative work of researchers at five universities across the United States, and is funded by the National Science Foundation...
and unvoiced th sounds are replaced by d or t respectively—that is, changed from a fricative to a plosive (stop). For instance, that (voiced th) becomes dat, and think (unvoiced th) becomes tink. - The sound l at the end of a word is often pronounced o or ol. For instance, mental is often pronounced mento; people is pronounced peepo.
- Pidgin is non-rhoticRhotic and non-rhotic accentsEnglish pronunciation can be divided into two main accent groups: a rhotic speaker pronounces a rhotic consonant in words like hard; a non-rhotic speaker does not...
. That is, r after a vowel is often omitted, similar to many dialects, such as Eastern New England, Australian EnglishAustralian EnglishAustralian English is the name given to the group of dialects spoken in Australia that form a major variety of the English language....
, and English English variantsVariety (linguistics)In sociolinguistics a variety, also called a lect, is a specific form of a language or language cluster. This may include languages, dialects, accents, registers, styles or other sociolinguistic variation, as well as the standard variety itself...
. For instance, car is often pronounced cah, and letter is pronounced letta. Intrusive r is also used. The number of Hawaiian Pidgin speakers with rhotic English has also been increasing. - Falling intonationIntonation (linguistics)In linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words. It contrasts with tone, in which pitch variation does distinguish words. Intonation, rhythm, and stress are the three main elements of linguistic prosody...
is used at the end of questions. This feature appears to be from HawaiianHawaiian languageThe Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii...
, and is shared with some other languages, including FijianFijian languageFijian is an Austronesian language of the Malayo-Polynesian family spoken in Fiji. It has 450,000 first-language speakers, which is less than half the population of Fiji, but another 200,000 speak it as a second language...
and SamoanSamoan languageSamoan Samoan Samoan (Gagana Sāmoa, is the language of the Samoan Islands, comprising the independent country of Samoa and the United States territory of American Samoa. It is an official language—alongside English—in both jurisdictions. Samoan, a Polynesian language, is the first language for most...
.
Grammatical features
Pidgin also has distinct grammatical forms not found in SAE, but some of which are shared with other dialectal forms of English or may derive from other linguistic influences.Forms used for SAE "to be":
- Generally, forms of English "to be" (i.e. the copula) are omitted when referring to inherent qualities of an object or person, forming in essence a stative verbStative verbA stative verb is one that asserts that one of its arguments has a particular property . Statives differ from other aspectual classes of verbs in that they are static; that is, they have undefined duration...
form. Additionally, inverted sentenceInverted sentenceAn inverted sentence is when the predicate comes before the subject Because there's no object following the verb, the noun phrase after the verb "lived" can be decoded as subject without any problem.-Examples:Inversion after initial negatives:...
order may be used for emphasis. (Many East AsiaEast AsiaEast Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...
n languages use stative verbs instead of the copula-adjectiveAdjectiveIn grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
construction of English and other Western languages.)
- Da baby cute. (or) Cute, da baby.
- The baby is cute.
Note that these constructions also mimic the grammar of the Hawaiian language. In Hawaiian, "nani ka pēpē" or "kiuke ka pēpē" is literally "cute, the baby" and is perfectly correct Hawaiian grammar meaning in English: "The baby is cute."
- When the verb "to be" refers to a temporary state or location, the word stay is used (see above). This may be influenced by other Pacific creoles, which use the word stap, from stop, to denote a temporary state or location. In fact, stop was used in Pidgin earlier in its history, and may have been dropped in favor of stay due to influence from Portuguese estar.
- Da book stay on top da table.
- The book is on the table.
- Da water stay cold.
- The water is cold.
For tense
Grammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
-marking of verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
, auxiliary verb
Auxiliary verb
In linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one or more of the following functions: passive voice,...
s are employed:
- To express past tense, Pidgin uses wen (went) in front of the verb.
- Jesus wen cry. (DJB, John 11:35)
- Jesus cried.
- To express future tense, Pidgin uses goin (going) in front of the verb, a declaratory word or verbum dicendiVerbum dicendiA verbum dicendi is a word that expresses speech or introduces a quotation, such as "say", "utter", "ask" or "rumble". Verba dicendi may grammaticalize into quotatives....
, common in many forms of slangSlangSlang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...
American English.
- God goin do plenny good kine stuff fo him. (DJB, Mark 11:9)
- God is going to do a lot of good things for him.
- To express past tense negative, Pidgin uses neva (never). Neva can also mean "never" as in normal English usage; context sometimes, but not always, makes the meaning clear.
- He neva like dat.
- He didn't want that. (or) He never wanted that. (or) He didn't like that.
- Use of fo (for) in place of the infinitive particle "to". Cf. dialectal form "Going for to carry me home."
- I tryin fo tink.
or
- I try fo tink."
- I'm trying to think.
For more information on grammar, also see Sakoda & Siegel (References, below) and the Pidgin Coup paper (External links, below).
Literature and performing arts
In recent years, writers from Hawaii have written poems, short stories, and other works in Pidgin. This list included well-known Hawaii authors such as Kent Bowman, James Grant Benton, Lois-Ann YamanakaLois-Ann Yamanaka
Lois-Ann Yamanaka is a Japanese-American poet and novelist from Hawaii. Many of her critically acclaimed literary works are written in Hawaiian Pidgin, and some of her writing has dealt with controversial ethnic issues...
and Lee Tonouchi
Lee Tonouchi
Lee A. Tonouchi is a Hawaii born writer and editor, who calls himself "Da Pidgin Guerilla" because of his strong advocacy of the Hawaiian Pidgin language.Tonouchi graduated from Aiea High School in 1990....
. A Pidgin translation of the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
(called Da Jesus Book) has also been created, as has an adaptation of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's Twelfth Night, or What You Will
Twelfth Night, or What You Will
Twelfth Night; or, What You Will is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written around 1601–02 as a Twelfth Night's entertainment for the close of the Christmas season...
, titled in Pidgin "Twelf' Night, or Whateva."
Several theater companies in Hawaii produce plays written and performed in Pidgin. The most notable of these companies is Kumu Kahua Theater.
External links
- e-Hawaii.com Searchable Pidgin English Dictionary
- The Charlene Sato Center for Pidgin, Creole and Dialect Studies, a center devoted to pidgin, creole, and dialect studies at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, Hawaii. Also home of the Pidgin Coup, a group of academics and community members interested in Hawaii Pidgin related research and education
- Position Paper on Pidgin by the "Pidgin Coup"
- Da Hawaii Pidgin Bible (see Da Jesus Book below)
- The Simple Voice, Hawaii pidgin poetry and commentary
- "Liddo Bitta Tita" Hawaiian Pidgin column written by Tita, alter-ego of Kathy Collins. Maui No Ka 'Oi MagazineMaui No Ka 'Oi MagazineMaui Nō Ka Oi Magazine is a bi-monthly regional magazine published by the Haynes Publishing Group in Wailuku, Hawaii.The phrase Maui nō ka ʻoi means "Maui is unparallel" in the Hawaiian language. Maui Nō Ka Oi Magazine features stories relating to the culture, art, dining, environmental issues,...
Vol.12 No.1 (Jan. 2008). - "Liddo Bitta Tita" audio file