Hawai'ian Creole and Pidgin

Hawai’i’s unofficial language is Hawai’ian Creole or Pidgin and, though it is viewed by many outsiders as a crude, senseless language, its origins are actually quite distinguished. Pidgin was originally designed to fuse several different groups of people. The >language integrates elements from Hawai’ian, English, Japanese, Chinese, and others to accommodate the different cultures that have come to call the islands home. It unites the people of Hawai’i against oppression, and creates a feeling of organized resistance. In order to examine the language, one must keep in mind that there is a difference between the spoken language and the written. Though people of Hawai’i spoke Pidgin to converse with people of different native tongues, they did not always write in Pidgin. Therefore, to search for and understand deeper truths within the language, one must understand both the printed and oral modes.

Bibliography:

“Pidgin and Creole Languages.” International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. 2002.
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/mufwene/pidginCreoleLanguage.html