Pidgin Hawaiian
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Pidgin Hawaiian (or Hawaii Plantation Pidgin) is a
pidgin A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified form of contact language that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn f ...
spoken in
Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...
, which draws most of its
vocabulary A vocabulary (also known as a lexicon) is a set of words, typically the set in a language or the set known to an individual. The word ''vocabulary'' originated from the Latin , meaning "a word, name". It forms an essential component of languag ...
from the
Hawaiian language Hawaiian (', ) is a critically endangered Polynesian language of the Austronesian language family, originating in and native to the Hawaiian Islands. It is the native language of the Hawaiian people. Hawaiian, along with English, is an offi ...
and could have been influenced by other
pidgin A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified form of contact language that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn f ...
s of the
Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...
region, such as Maritime Polynesian Pidgin. Emerging in the mid-nineteenth century, it was spoken mainly by
immigrants Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as permanent residents. Commuters, tourists, and other short- ...
to Hawaii, and mostly died out in the early twentieth century, but is still spoken in some communities, especially on the Big Island. Like all pidgins, Pidgin Hawaiian was a fairly rudimentary language, used for immediate communicative purposes by people of diverse language backgrounds, but who were mainly from
Southeast Asia Southeast Asia is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, southeastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and northwest of the Mainland Au ...
n countries such as the
Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...
and
Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...
. As Hawaiian was the main language of the islands in the nineteenth century, most words came from this
Polynesia Polynesia ( , ) is a subregion of Oceania, made up of more than 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are called Polynesians. They have many things in ...
n language, though many others contributed to its formation. In the 1890s and afterwards, the increased spread of
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...
favoured the use of an English-based pidgin instead, which, once nativized as the
first language A first language (L1), native language, native tongue, or mother tongue is the first language a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period hypothesis, critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' ...
of children, developed into a creole which today is misleadingly called
Hawaiian Pidgin Hawaiian Pidgin (known formally in linguistics as Hawaiʻi Creole English or HCE and known locally as Pidgin) is an English-based creole language spoken in Hawaiʻi. An estimated 600,000 residents of Hawaii speak Hawaiian Pidgin natively and ...
. This variety has also been influenced by Pidgin Hawaiian; for example in its use of the
grammatical In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the goal of which is to formu ...
marker . (Pidgin Hawaiian) 'After Henry had eaten dinner, I went.' . (Hawaiian Creole)'' Da Jesus Book'' (2000: 43), quoted in Siegel (2008: 81). 'Jesus finished teaching all these kinds of stories.'


See also

* Maritime Polynesian Pidgin


Footnotes


References

* Hawaiian language Hawaiian {{CPacific-lang-stub Pidgin and creole language stubs Languages of Hawaii Endangered pidgins and creoles Languages attested from the 19th century