preview

Hawaii Creole English By Hawaii Pidgin

Decent Essays

Hawaii creole english, or in other words “pidgin,” is based on the english language, but also containing words from many other languages. Some of those languages include Hawaiian, Japanese, Portuguese, and more. Hawaii pidgin english is widely used in everyday conversations, television shows, and advertisements. Hawaii creole english was created many years ago, but is used by a large number of people on the Hawaiian islands, as well as on the mainland. Hawai’i creole english was first established around the 1800’s, when Hawaii started recruiting laborers from all over the globe to work on the sugar plantations. The laborers consisted of people from China, Portugal, Japan, Korea, Puerto Rico, Russia, Spain, the Philippines, and other countries (Hargrove, Sakota, and Siegel 1). Since there were such a diverse group of people, they all spoke different languages. Which made it hard for them to communicate. Thus, Hawai 'i creole english was soon developed and became the primary source of communication among all the different ethnic groups (Thompson 1). During the plantations, the children born during that time period were starting to attend school. That is when many of them first came into contact with standard english, since majority of them already spoke hawaii pidgin (Scanlan 1). Ever since the plantations, more than half of Hawaiis population today speak pidgin. Majority of the Hawaii pidgin comes from the english language, but are also contained from other languages.

Get Access