Exploring the Pidgin Language
In Hawaii, you most commonly hear people speaking English, yet our state has another official language in our constitution—the islands’ native language, Hawaiian. It was not always this way. With the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 and the following annexation in 1898, the Hawaiian language was banned from the government and schools. In 1978, Hawaiian was re-established as an official language of the State of Hawaii and, in 1990, the federal Government of the United States adopted a policy to recognize the right of Hawaii to preserve, use, and support its indigenous language.
Photo Credit: Honolulu Advertiser
Yet, when you hear a local comfortably speak to another local, you sort of have to do a double take and ask, “What language is that?” It sounds foreign, but strangely familiar. I want to set the record straight that this is not Hawaiian, but it is a dominant dialect in Hawaii. We call this dialect pidgin.
Let me start off with a simple example. Howzit? It doesn’t even look like an English word, but it comes from a very familiar English phrase: How is it going? If you think about it long enough, pidgin starts to make sense, but in order for you to have a real pidgin conversation, perhaps it would be easier to learn where it came from.
Pidgin originates from the time when Hawaii opened its ports to European and American seafarers, and the cultures of all these different groups assimilated within our islands. The language grew as the local Hawaiian people conversed with missionaries, sea traders, and immigrant workers who tended to the land. Although English remained the backbone of the language, the different languages that were brought by these groups, like Japanese, Filipino, and Chinese, and of course, Hawaiian, contributed to our language of pidgin.
Some view the language as a degradation of the English language, but we view it in a much more positive light. Historically, this dialect allowed people of extremely different cultures to converse with each other and learn of each others own culture and traditions. On a more current note, it shows the assimilation of our culture—how Hawaii is not one, but a group of many cultures and traditions meshed together.
Further Pidgin Examples:
- “Where you stay?”—Where are you?
- “I get ‘em bumbye.”—I’ll do it later.
- “No worries. I wen tell Judy ‘bout da movie.”—Don’t worry about it. I told Judy about the movie already.
- Fo’get what I said da oddah day. I nevah mean ‘em.”—Forget about what I said the other day. I didn’t mean it.
- “Take one leff, den go one oddah leff. Kay, try go little bit moa and den you gon’ see my house.”—Take a left, then another left. Then go a little bit further and then you’ll see my house.
Each island has their own pidgin language and further, districts within each island often have a different pidgin language as well.
For more about the pidgin dialect in Hawaii, check out the lists put together by PulpConnection.
