If Can, Can. If No Can, No Can

Aloha cuz! How you stay? Bumbai we gon go da kine, ya? Hi! How are you? Later on we're going to do the thing we talked about. 

Growing up in Hawai`i, my English was no where near the same English that I speak now. That's because most people in Hawai`i speak Pidgin. A pidgin is similar to a creole in that it has roots in another language. A pidgin is developed as a way of communication across different languages using words and syntax from various origins while a creole is essentially what a pidgin will develop into over multiple generations. Though by rules of linguistics, Hawaiian Pidgin is technically a creole, it goes simply by the name Pidgin.

Pidgin in Hawai`i sense when you consider the history of the state. Many people immigrated to Hawai`i from Asia (mainly Japan, China, Korea, and the Philippines) to be laborers for the sugar cane industry between the late 1800s all the way through the late 1900s. The reason that there were so many groups was partly so that the Big Five sugar companies could charge each ethnic group different wages but these groups would have no way to protest or communicate this with each other. Pidgin developed from Cantonese, Japanese, Spanish, Tagalog, Portuguese, Korean, English, and Native Hawaiian language and remains one of the most widely spoken languages in the state today in both home and sometimes work or school settings.

From the time of the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy all the way up until the 1980s, there was a push by the government to eradicate Pidgin and make English the only language in the state. However, there has recently been a strong movement to reclaim Pidgin as a way to celebrate Hawai`i's diverse cultural background. Many books have been translated and published in Pidgin (including the King James Bible) and in November of 2015 the state of Hawai`i recognized Pidgin as an official language.

The video above is an example of what our language sounds like. It's a very unique language that I think would be an interesting topic for cultural historians and anthropologists to study.

Have you ever heard anyone speak Pidgin before today? Learn a few phrases before your next trip to

Hawai`i and impress everyone with how akamai (smart) you are!