In the Hawaiian Islands, there were different languages on each island. Then King Kamehameha III united the islands as one territory with a common language called Hawaiian. Over periods of time, merchants from different countries visited Hawaii, bringing their own language. This began with the English language. American merchants returning from China would stop in Hawaii, and some of the Chinese people on the crew would stay. People from other countries also came to live in Hawaii. With the many different people and languages, they weren’t able to communicate. These people derived their own language, which was a mixture of the individual languages, to communicate with each other. This was passed on to the following generations to become the unique language of Hawaiian Pidgin that it is today, English-based, but consists of seven diverse languages. This happened just how Pinker writes of pidgin languages: people make their own new way of language that is not grammatically correct and it is called pidgin. This is then passed on to the next generation who makes the pidgin language into a grammatically correct language called creole.
Hawaiian Pidgin is not the same as the pidgin spoken in the deep South Pacific Islands. Hawaiian Pidgin (Hawaiian Creole English) began with the arrival of people from other countries to work on the plantations. The different groups of people came from China, Japan, the Philippines, Samoa, and Korea. The languages of these countries mixed with Hawaiian and English to make the unique language of Hawaiian Pidgin.
The Pidgin written language uses the English alphabet, but only has 12 letters: a, e, i, o, u, h, k, l, m, n, p, and w. The letters h, k, l, m, n, and p are pronounced as in English. When after i and e, w is pronounced as a v; when after a, u, and o, and at the beginning of a sentence, w is pronounced like the w in English.
Hawaiian Pidgin is spoken by many people who live in Hawaii, but mostly by teenagers. The majority of the words and phrases are versions of English slang, with words from the other languages that make up Pidgin, making it sound like un-grammatical English. An example of a shortened English phrases is no can (cannot), talk stink (speaking bad about someone), and wat doing? (what are you doing?). A Pidgin phrase that sounds like English with bad grammar is "If I come stay go, an you no stay come, wat foa I go?" ("If I come and you’re not there, why should I go?") (www.extreme-hawaii.com). (The pronunciation and accent used in Hawaiian Pidgin is hard to detect in the spelling and written words).
The following is A Mother Goose nursery rhyme The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe translated into Hawaiian Pidgin:
Dere waz one ol Tutu
Stay living in one slippa
She get choke kids
Planny braddahs and one sistah
She geev um lau lau
But no mo da poi
Den broke dere okoles
And sent dem moi moi
Vocabulary:
Even though English is the language taught in the schools, the people of Hawaii today still speak their own Hawaiian Pidgin. Bookstores in Hawaii sell books that help tourists to understand Pidgin. These books have a list of vocabulary and also phrases that are said in Pidgin and their translation into Haole (Caucasians, and anything pertaining to Caucasians including language). Although it is called pidgin, Hawaiian Pidgin has developed into a unique creole language.