Marcel Lutece Term PaperHistory of the English Language Prof. John RoyJOHN D ROY   <JohnRoy@brooklyn.cuny.edu>

Hawaiian Pidgin English – from Hawaiian Pidgin to Creole; Social and Political Factors in its Evolution

The evolution of what is commonly called “Hawaiian Pidgin” ( HPC ) has

undoubtedly been a thoroughly complex process, still ongoing up to the present. HPC

originated from the combination of a pre-existing pidgin ( Hawaiian pidgin ) with at least

four other significant language groups ( Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese and English,

among others ). In the midst of this development, marked by dynamic immigration waves

which contoured the newly-forming pidgin, the territory of Hawaii endured an upheaval

and overturning of its dominant social and political hierarchy, severely impacting the

evolution of the language and making it an increasingly important social and political

caste marker, which it had been only in a minor way to this time. What had originated as

a form of practical communication in the sugar cane, pineapple and rice fields, primarily

of Oahu, soon became a determiner of social class and a political tool for social warfare.

Concurrently however, the Hawaiian Pidgin was increasingly viewed as a source of

cultural pride for its adherents, even as one’s primary ownership of it threatened to

relegate them to the lower rungs of Hawaiian society. The political conflict is still

ongoing, and this paper will look at the major points of development of HPC, including

important syntactical and phonological identifiers, as well as the significant political and

social factors that have shaped this language.

The earliest known period of enduring contact between Hawaii and the West

occurred around the turn of the 19th c., when the Hawaiian Islands served as a stopping

over point for the trading of furs between China and the U.S. West Coast. A small

number of Europeans became settlers on the islands, and small numbers of Hawaiians

worked on the ships and interacted with the European crews (( this is cited as one piece

of evidence for the theory of diffusion of CEC ( Caribbean English Creole ) components

to Hawaii, which will be discussed later )) ( Roberts 3 ). Over the next thirty years,

whaling and other trades increased the contact between foreigners and the indigenous

Hawaiian population, and a sharing of the Hawaiian and English languages occurred,

assisting in the formation of the original Hawaiian Pidgin, which existed prior to the

Asian influx and impact on the language ( Ferguson and Heath 83 ). This interaction;

however, also brought diseases which decimated the native Hawaiian population from

between 200,000 and 1,000,000 in the 1780’s, to 88,000 by 1843 ( Sakoda and Siegel 3 ).

A significantly greater influence on the transmission of English into Hawaii was

accomplished by the Protestant Missionaries, whose emphasis was spreading the

scriptures to indigenous people in their own language. The Protestants created a phonetic

alphabet to enable the writing of the spoken Hawaiian language and set up schools to

teach reading and writing. By 1839, the bible had been translated into Hawaiian, and

most government documents were written in Hawaiian until the mid 1870’s, when

English started to become the more prevalent government language ( Ferguson and Heath

83 ). In the 1850’s, rice was already being harvested in Hawaii and shipped to California

and the Western states, yet it was at this time that investment was made into sugar cane,

hence the need for workers to labor in the fields. It is estimated that between 1850 and

1876, over 2,000 Chinese laborers, mostly Southern Chinese, came to work on Oahu,

later to be followed by large numbers of Portuguese and even larger numbers of Japanese

and Pilipinos starting in the 1880’s ( Sakoda and Siegel 4,5 ). In the 1850’s the

Hawaiians were still ruling the islands and therefore orders were given in Hawaiian. The

problem was that both the English-speaking overseers and the Chinese ( and Japanese )

fieldworkers did not understand Hawaiian fluently, thus it can be asserted that the first

pidgin was a Pidgin Hawaiian and not a Pidgin English. Roberts, Sakoda and Siegel cite

as primary evidence the fact that the largest contribution of vocabulary to Hawaiian

Pidgin is from the Hawaiian language, and it was after this initial Hawaiian pidgin was

established that English emerged as the lexifier ( re-lexifier ) of Hawaiian Pidgin

( Roberts 9 ) ( Reinecke and Tokimasa 56 ).

Pidgin Hawaiian differed from authentic Hawaiian in several important ways.

One change was the deletion of the apostrophe ( called the okina in Hawaiian ). Because

of difficulties with pronunciation and an emphasis of practical communication over the

stylistic elements of ( to the Chinese, Portuguese, Americans… ) a foreign language

difficult to master, words such as Hawai’i became merely Hawaii; Me’le Kali’ki’maka

( Merry Christmas ) became Mele Kalikimaka and etc. In certain cases, the omission of

the okina was accompanied by a change in the meaning of the word. The word pi’i mai,

which means ‘to climb towards a certain direction’ in Hawaiian, was reduced to mean ‘to

come’, and simplified to ‘pii mai’ in the newly formed pidgin ( Sakoda and Siegel 5 ),

further signifying the transition from a singular cultural language with developed

subtleties of sound and meaning, to a practical integration / borrowing of the simplest

forms which would enable basic communication. In the above mentioned cases, it is not

clear if the omission of the okina accounted for the change of meaning in these and other

Hawaiian words, or if the change in meaning simply accompanied the omission, one

having no relationship to the other. In addition, words were borrowed from other

languages in the Pidgin Hawaiian, such as the word fish from Engish, except that it was

hawaiianized to ‘pihi’; other examples include kau kau ( to eat ) being altered by the

Chinese to become ‘chow chow’ ( Reinecke and Tokimasa 57 ).

The general point of alteration from Hawaiian to English language dominance is

associated with the year 1875, when the Reciprocity Treaty was signed between Hawaii

and the United States. This led to freer trade and an influx of both American population

and American investment in Hawaii. The number of Hawaiians had decreased to about

50,000, while the number of English schools increased and American consolidation of

power began to emerge ( Sakoda and Siegel 6 ). Shortly after this time period, the

evolution of the big five ( trustees who would eventually take control of Hawaii’s banking

and agriculture sectors through interlocking directorates ) began to take shape ( Tamura

433 ). In the 1880’s, the numbers of Chinese, Portuguese and Japanese families began to

increase, mostly as field workers. By this time; however, the English language was

replacing Hawaiian on the plantations, and these new immigrants effectively began the

next phase change toward the HPC, by assimilating the previously developed Hawaiian

Pidgin, along with English words and phrases. Sakoda and Siegel cite two examples to

illustrate this fusion ( English words are underlined ):

Oe no tumach holoholo, hausu stop, mama nana ( ‘you no too-much travel-round, house

stop, mother look.’ ), meaning ‘Don’t go out so much. Stay home and take care of your

mother.

( Bickerton and Wilson, qtd. by Sakoda and Siegel 7 ).

Mi no pilikia but nuinui hanaha nanuinui kala. ( ‘Me no trouble but plenty work, plenty

money.’ ), meaning ‘I’m not troublesome, but I’m making a lot of money.’

( Roberts, qtd. by Sakoda and Siegel 7 )

From these two examples, Sakoda and Siegel elaborate on the emergence of

syntactic and grammatical structures which would endure into the modern HPC:

1. ‘too much’, meaning a lot of / very ; this phrase would also come to mean

‘irritating / annoying’ in HPC. ( 7 ) ( ex. ‘He too much; he no stop bodda

everybody, eh’, meaning: ‘He’s so annoying that he never stops bothering

people.’ This can be used to depict the present or the recent past in modern HPC.

2. ‘no’, representing one of the main negative markers ( not, no, nevah, no mo /

more ) which retain their use in HPC. ( 7, 80-84 ) ( Odo 234 ) An example would

be: ‘He no mo money, cause he spend ‘em any kine.’ ( He doesn’t have any

money, because he spends it any way [ non-selectively] ).

3. In these two examples, the overriding concept of efficiency is evident, as the

necessary subjects, verbs, objects and the occasional coordinating conjunction are

employed, but nothing extraneous exists beyond conveying the base meaning of

the sentences.

From the examples above, it can be observed that the sentence structure and parts

of speech were still in flux, though this would gradually change over the next 20 years,

first with the increasing standardization of plantation terms, and eventually with the

expansion of a more practical standardized language into the general public domain.

An interesting example of a lexical term relating to field work is ‘hapai ko’, a

Japanese-Hawaiian compound where ‘hapai’ ( pregnant, in Hawaiian ) and ‘ko’ ( cane, in

Japanese ), form the compound meaning ‘to haul or carry a large amount of sugar cane’.

The term was later expanded to mean ‘carrying a heavy load’ in everyday usage

(Quisquirin*1 ).

*1 – Bryan Quisquirin was interviewed by telephone in order to gain additional accounts

of the development of the language. Quisquirin is a member of The Hawaiian Historical

Society and The Philipine Historical Society. He has contributed to the tracing of

Hawaiian genealogical history by researching church records as far back as the 1700’s.

Even more interesting examples are onomatopoeia compounds, such as chica-

chica, referring to walking across a cane field at night when it is very quiet ( the word

being the approximation of the sound one makes while doing this ). This term came to

mean more generally someone who can be heard walking down a quiet street, who would

not normally be heard. The terms ‘widi-widi’ and ‘wa-wa’, respectively, refer to the

sounds believed to be made from cane- field workers riding down the flues ( constructed

water channels, which were used to transport sugar-cane bundles from higher inland

areas to lower elevations as a means of transport ) ( Quisquirin ).

At the turn of the century, several events intersected which led to the

establishment of Hawaiian Pidgin English ( HPE ) as an established language. Firstly,

there was the emergence of relatively fixed sentence structures among the pidgin

speakers, with these forms expanding into the general populations, not merely relegated

to the plantations ( as mentioned ). Second, it is noted by Sakoda and Siegel that at this

time, the first generation of Japanese children began learning HPE from their classmates

to the extent that they spoke this language more than they spoke their native language

( 7 ). Though it is clear that different communities still spoke differing varieties of HPE,

depending on what their native language was, the assimilation of this language by the

school-aged children would have had a standardizing / leveling effect on the pidgin

spoken as a whole. This is one of the reasons Derek Bickerton ( 1981 ) asserts for his

theory of Language Bioprogram Hypothesis ( LBH ), versus that of Diffusion, as

asserted by Goodman ( 1985 ) and others ( Roberts 1,2,4 ). Bickerton assesses that if

these children are learning more of their newly evolving pidgin everyday and therefore

distancing themselves from the forms of their parents, how can it be argued that that what

was passed down to their parents ( in terms of structure; commonalities with CEC ) are

being passed on to them, when their development is divergent from the structures of their

parents ( Sebba 176,177 ). Bickerton, as quoted by Singh, states that as opposed to the

children learning a polished language from their parents, :

“[In HPE, they ],have, instead, something which may be quite adequate

for emergency use, but that which is quite unfit to serve as anyone’s

primary tongue; which by reason of its variability, does not present even

the little it offers in a form that would permit anyone to learn it ; and

which the parent, with the best will in the world, cannot teach, since that

parent knows no more of the language than the child ( and will pretty soon

know less ). Everywhere else in the world it goes without saying that the

parent knows more language than the child; here, if the child is to have an

adequate language, he must speedily outstrip the knowledge of the

parent.”

( Bickerton, qtd. by Singh – 55 ).

Singh then concludes Bickerton’s view by asserting: “They therefore turned the

insufficient linguistic input they received into a fully-fledged language ( a creole ), by

‘running it through’ an innate system universal to us all: the language bio-program.” (55).

Several prominent features of HPE ( from the first decade of the twentieth century )

which have endured into HCE include the use of ‘mo’’ as an intensifier ( mo’ fast = faster;

mo’ good = better ), no mo’ = there isn’t any ( No mo’ food in da fridge, a? = There isn’t

any more food in the fridge, is there? ), no can = can’t; and ‘like’ expressing want, as in

‘He like go, but she no gon let um’.’,where ‘no gon = not going to, and ‘um’ can represent

the third person conjugation in the singular ( he, she, it, ) and ‘them’. ( Sakoda and Siegel

7, 80-84 ). These very important forms have remained constant up to the present time in

the more basilectic side of the creolization continuum of Hawaii

When the second generation of Portuguese and Chinese began to appear

( remember that first generation Japanese corresponds roughly to second generation

Chinese and Portuguese due to the approximate 20 year lapse in mass immigration ). Since

the parents of this had learned HPE as children, this was now their first language which

they taught to their children in a relatively stable form, hence rendering HPE a Creole for

the first time ( Tamura 434 ). It is assessed that sometime between 1910 and 1920 was

approximately when this official establishment took place. It was approximately a decade

later when statistics show that ‘Pidgin English’, or HPC, became the language spoken by a

majority of Hawaiians ( Roberts ).

It is at this point possible then, to view the main aspects of Hawaiian Pidgin Creole

in their developed form, although it would be erroneous to posit that this form is final, as

the Creole is fluid and changing until the modern day. Sakoda and Seigel cite several

enduring features which differentiate the modern Creole from its predecessor, namely that

“the Creole did not have variation in pronunciation that was caused by influences from

other languages in the pidgin.” ( 11). Three distinct grammatical features are: the use of

‘never’ or ‘nevah’ to indicate something had not happened yet ( He never wen go ride da

bike ); the word ‘stay’ indicating continuous action ( She stay at da mall, or he stay

grinding ( eating ) at Boy’s house ), and ‘for’ as a replacement for ‘to’ ( ‘He go for punch

‘em, and da buggah wen run’ = ‘He went to punch the other guy, and / but the other guy

ran away ). As mentioned previously, two of the above three sentences also illustrate the

word ‘wen’ used as an auxiliary participle to render to present verb in the past tense. Given

the Chinese system of inflexion where the verb is always in the present tense, one could

assess that this form may have developed from this or a similar system in the development

of the Creole.

In looking at the contributions of the major groups to the vocabulary of HPC, it

seems not so much a question of who was more prevalent in numbers or active / aggressive

in impacting the language formation from the plantations of Hawaii, but who happened to

be there at the right time. As Sakoda and Siegel explain “Even though the Japanese were

by far the largest immigrant group, their language appears to have had little effect on the

structure of pidgin” ( 13 ). The authors above quote Reinecke as asserting “The first large

immigration of Japanese did not occur until 1888, when the Hawaiian, Chinese and

Portuguese between them had pretty well fixed the form of the “pidgin” [ English] spoken

on plantations.” (13). The Hawaiians are credited with contributing the greatest number of

words and conventions to HPC, with the Chinese and Portuguese also adding significantly

(( though Reinecke seems to disagree ( Reinecke and Tomasa 57 ), placing the Japanese

second for their enduring food nomenclature and crediting the Chinese with only having

added two items [ ‘paikee’ –chinese man and ‘chow chow’ – to eat ] to the Creole )), the

Japanese are credited with having developed the sentence structure PP-S-V, where the verb

is placed at the end of the sentence where a subject, verb and prepositional phrase exist

( Quisquirin ). He maintains that as early as 1868, although the Japanese were present on

Hawaiian plantations in relatively small numbers, their language was the most inflexible of

any other group ( their verbs placed at the ending of sentences ), with the present Chinese

structure much like Latin with respect to verb placement ( the verb and other parts of

speech can be interchanged and the meaning of the sentence does not ). Therefore, in order

to create swift and practical communication, the structure was facilitated as described

above. Modern sentences such as: ‘Aye, to the mall, you guys like go?’ and ‘At Jill’s

house tomorrow night, wat time we gon eat?’ are constructions created through Japanese

language sentence structure.

The full story of Hawaiian Pidgin Creole cannot be told without detailing the

political forces which set the Hawaiian people at odds with their language, and in

ambivalent and proud support of it at the same time. Eileen Tamura narrates that:

“Arthur L. Dean, former president of the University of Hawai’i and then

vice-president of the sugar company Alexander and Baldwin and chairman

of the Territorial Board of Education, admitted in 1936 that the

establishment of Standard schools was a way to separate children of

different cultural and economic groups” ( 437 ).

Coinciding with the 1920’s, when HPC had become the most prevalent spoken language in

the islands, the interlocking directorate known as “the big five”, who controlled the

banking, agriculture and political functions of Hawaii, set in motion a series of laws

intended to create an effective caste system benefiting those who were favored ( white

Europeans ) and creating an underclass of those who were not, namely immigrants and

native Hawaiians. The vehicle employed to accomplish this was the barrier of Standard

American English ( Tamura 433,434,435 ).

Though the European population in Hawaii was only 8% in 1920 ( Tamura 433 ),

the most powerful of them had managed to orchestrate the overthrow of Queen Lilioukalani

in 1893, then lobbied for annexation to the United States. It was through this status of

Hawaii as a US territory that the “big five” was able to run their empire on the backs of the

unskilled immigrant laborers. In 1920, a massive sugar plantation strike over low wages

and poor working conditions was fervently supported by the Japanese newspapers, as well

as the Japanese and other teachers in the public school system. According to Tamura, the

directorate and others feared that they would lose their power as Japanese currently

comprised 42% of the Hawaiian population and 55% of the plantation workers. Thus the

hostilities provided a catalyst for a series of actions against both the ‘foreign language’ of

HPC in the Hawaii Public School System and all non-English newspapers throughout the

islands ( 440 ).

Coinciding with and playing upon anti-foreign sentiment which had developed on

the mainland during WW I, a bill was introduced in 1921 which would have required all

foreign newspapers to publish English translations of anything which they printed. The

intent was to put all non-English newspapers out of commission, as the costs of a double

printing would have been too high for the publishers to continue. Because this law would

have impacted Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese and all religious newspapers, there was

adequate public opposition to effectively countermand the implementation of this law

( Tamura 441 ). The Public School System; however, was not as fortunate. Starting in

1920, Tamura details how efforts to dismiss and subjugate speakers of HPC ( both teachers

and students ) would continue to the modern era. By the mid-1920’s, oral English

examinations were given as a requirement for aspiring teachers to graduate from Normal

school. Within two years of this, Normal schools began testing students in oral SAE and

openly rejecting those who failed to pass the tests. What was especially crippling is that

students who did not meet SAE expectations were not allowed to go to school, effectively

creating an expanding underclass of plantation workers and other manual laborers on the

basis of their imperfect English. There were also outright attempts to ban any schools

which did not teach SAE. Though these laws were struck down by the Supreme Court as

unconstitutional in 1927 ( Tamura 435-437 ).

Starting in 1924, special SAE only schools were created in Honolulu and one each

on the other islands, affording safe haven for European parents who “feared their children

would learn Hawai’i Creole English if sent to regular public schools” ( Tamura, 436 ). For

the remainder of the century, the bias expressed against HPC would ebb and flow with the

social currents of the mainland. Conditions were particularly tough during and after World

War II, but then eased with the liberalism that swept the Western world in the 1960’s and

1970’s. In 1987, there was another attempt to legislate the banning of HPC from the

schools, coinciding with the “English only movement in the Western US during this time;

though once again this attempt was met with strong opposition, and a ceremonial weaker

law urging the teaching of SAE was passed ( 450 ).

It is in this wide-ranging context that Tamura analyzes the effect of this bias on the

speakers of the language itself. The clear equation of SAE with success and HPC as a second

class language created an elitist attitude which was adopted by ‘locals’ and European

Hawaiians alike by the middle of the century. Though the SAE only Standard schools were

eventually closed in 1960, attendees ( of any ancestry ) overwhelmingly associated

themselves with superiority over the general population, as reflected in a survey taken in

1945 ( Tamura, 437 ). In this way, the politicization of language has created both an

acrolectic and a basilectic effect on the Creole continuum. Certain students will strive to

perfect their SAE in the hopes of achieving success, but in the process, isolate themselves

from their communities of origin. The perception that someone has ‘turned their back’ on

their heritage and ancestry, especially in Hawaii, is a powerful binding mechanism which has

pulled many people in the opposite direction, shunning SAE as a tool of the oppressor and

oppressive class. This dichotomy is observed to the present day, with the general population

of downtown Honolulu, Kaneohe, and Wailua ( North Shore – east; very wealthy ) speaking

almost perfect English ( though with characteristic local intonation and slight accent,

representing the acrolect of doctors, lawyers and government officials and affiliates ). On the

North Shore East and Western coast of Oahu; however ( Kahuku, Hauula Waianae,

Nanakuli…), you still gon fin’ people who tok li’ dat, an if you try come hybolic wit’dem’,

dey gon tell you, eh fo sur you like beef, eh ( You’ll still find people who speak like that

[ as illustrated ], and if you become conceited / arrogant with them [ over the superiority of

your speech ], they’ll become offended and want to fight with you ). On the island of Oahu,

the mesolect would be represented by the southern areas ( Waipahu, Pearl City, Aiea, and

inland around Millilani ( see table II map ). The Creole also necessarily corresponds to

income level, with the wealthiest levels representing the extreme acrolect and the poorest

areas , the extreme basilect. Given the politics which have been described, this is not so much

a result of a naturally occurring system of stratification, but an unfortunately willful and

prevalent actions which seem to exist within most Creoles throughout the world.

Table 1 – Selected HPC Vocabulary

1. English words whose meanings / parts of speech have changed in HPC:a. lawnmower – from a noun to a verb ( ex. I gon lawnmower da grass. )b. panty – a sissy / weakling – ( ex. Eh, even da wahines can beat ‘em up; he one

real panty, eh. ).c. Shame – noun to verb (ex. When you wen tell his mada, you wen go shame him ).d. Off – used as a verb (ex. Aye, you like off da light so we can sleep? ).

2. English words where form and sometimes meaning have changed: a. cockaroach ( noun to verb ) – to steal or sneak away with ( ex. -- You buggah,

you wen go cockaroach my wallet, eh. ).b. brah – brotherc. mento – psychologically disturbedd. nuff – enoughe. laters – ‘see you later’ ( Eh, laters brah, I gone ).

3. Compounds derived from English, though not found in Standard Englisha. bolohead – bald ( ‘bolo’=bald + head )b. chicken skin – goosebumpsc. stink eye – dirty / angry lookd. talk story – relax and talk casually

4. Selected vocabulary from contributing languages other than English: a. akamai – smart ( Hawaiian )b. keiki – a child ( Hawaiian )c. ohana – family ( Hawaiian )d. pau – finished ( Hawaiian )e. chi-chi’s – breasts ( Japanese )f. daikon – white radish ( Japanese )g. bento – box lunch ( Japanese )h. obake – ghost ( Japanese )i. babooz – idiot; dolt ( Portuguese )j. lavalava – a wrap / sarong ( Samoan )k. malassada – a sweet / sugared doughnut dessert ( Portuguese )l. paikee – Chinese man ( Chinese )m. li hing mui – salty / tangy dried fruit ( Chinese )

5. Blended Compounds – made up of English and other languages: a. onolicious – delicious . tasty ( Hawaiian: ‘ono’ ( tasty ) + delicious )b. hele on – move on / hurry up ( Hawaiian: ‘hele’ ( to go, move ) + on )c. poi dog – mixed breed dog ( Hawaiian: ‘poi’ ( pounded taro root ) + dog )d. hulihuli chicken – chicken roasted while turning on a spit ( Hawaiian: huli = to

turn ( note the double word acting as an intensifier ).

* ( All word derivations and meanings taken from Sakoda and Siegel; Odo, and Reinecke and Tokimasa ).

Table II – Map of Oahu

Lutece 13

Works Cited

Ferguson, Charles, and Shirley B. Heath, Eds. Language In The USA. England: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Odo, Carol. “English Patterns in Hawaii” American Speech, Vol. 45, No. 3 / 4. Autumn – Winter, 1970: pp.234-239.

Quisquirin, Bryan. Personal interview. 18. May 2007.

Reinecke, John, and Aiko Tokimasa. “The English Dialect of Hawaii” American Speech, Vol. 9, No. 1. Feb. 1934. pp. 48-58.

Roberts, Sarah, “The Role of Diffusion in the Genesis of Hawaiian Creole” Language, Vol.74, No. 1. March 1998. pp.1-39.

Sakoda, Kent, and Jeff Siegel, Pidgin Grammar – An Introduction to the Creole Language of Hawai’i. Hawaii, Bess Press , Inc. 2003.

Sebba, Mark. Contact Languages Pidgins And Creoles. Great Britain. Antony Rowe Ltd. 1997.

Singh, Ishtla. Pidgins and Creoles An Introduction. Great Britain. Arnold Pub. 2000.

Tamura, Eileen. “Power, Status, and Hawai’i Creole English: An Example of Linguistic Intolerance in American History” The Pacific Historical Review Vol.65, No. 3. August 1996. pp. 431-454.