Hawaiian Pidgin
| Hawaiian Creole English | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Hawai‘i, United States |
|
Native speakers
|
600,000 (2012) |
|
English Creole
|
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | hawa1247 |
| Linguasphere | 52-ABB-dc |
Hawaiian Pidgin English, Hawaiian Creole English, HCE, or locally known as simply Pidgin, is a creole language based in part on English, spoken by many residents of Hawaii. Although English and Hawaiian are the co-official languages of the state of Hawaii, Hawaiian Pidgin is used by many Hawaii residents in everyday casual conversation and is often used in advertising targeted toward locals in Hawaii. In the Hawaiian language, Hawaiian Creole English is called "ʻōlelo paʻi ʻai", which literally means "pounding-taro language".
Despite its name, Hawaiian Pidgin is not a pidgin, but rather a full-fledged, nativized, and demographically stable natural language. It did, however, evolve from various real pidgins spoken between ethnic groups in Hawaii.
Hawaiian Pidgin originated on sugarcane plantations as a form of communication used between English speaking residents and non-English speaking Native Hawaiians and foreign immigrants. It supplanted, and was influenced by, the existing pidgin that Native Hawaiians already used on plantations and elsewhere in Hawaii. Because such sugarcane plantations often hired workers from many different countries, a common language was needed in order for the plantation workers to communicate effectively with each other and their supervisors. Hawaiian Pidgin has been influenced by many different languages, including Portuguese, Hawaiian, American English, and Cantonese. As people of other language backgrounds were brought in to work on the plantations, such as Japanese, Filipinos, and Koreans, Hawaiian 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 Puerto Rican settlers in Hawaii. Hawaiian Pidgin was created mainly as a means of communication or to facilitate cooperation between the immigrants and the Americans to get business done. Even today, Hawaiian Pidgin retains some influences from these languages. For example, the word "stay" in Hawaiian Pidgin has a form and use similar to the Hawaiian verb "noho", Portuguese verb "ficar" or Spanish "estar", which mean "to be" but are used only when referring to a temporary state or location.
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