My mainland friends used to ask me to speak Hawaiian pidgin and I couldn't get it out. In the 35 years that we lived in Illinois I managed to lose the "touch" within a couple of years. I remember listening to a recording of myself when we first arrived in Chicago and was surprised to hear my pidgin accent. Now I'm trying to get it back, but my brother and sister-in-law tell me I have a ways to go yet. Still, Tiffany and Jonathan chuckle when they call from the mainland and I say, "Eh...howzit?"
Art and I were going over some pidgin that we remembered from our childhood. Granted our pidgin is different because he's from the Big Island and I'm from Oahu. Pidgin actually evolved with their own distinctions on different islands. For instance, snow cones are called Shave Ice on Oahu and Ice Shave on the Big Island.
Here's an explanation from Wikipedia.
Here are some other fun phrases that Art and I thought of. Ron of Waikiki, L. from W., Cloudia and my other Hawaiian buddies, go come jump in any time you like, yeah.
Shut da light or Go pio da light. (Turn off the light.)
You like go kau kau? (Would you like to go and get something to eat?)
No stay here. (It's not here. The here is pronounced more like heeah.)
Stay come. (It's arrived.) example: "The letter stay come."
No stay come. (It or he or she hasn't arrived.)
Stuck nose. (Congestion) example: "You get stuck nose or what?"
Buckaloose (I don't remember using this phrase but Joanne, my childhood buddy says we do use it. It means mayhem or being out of control.) "It went go buckaloose."
Stink-eye (Nasty look) Example: "He when give me the stink eye."
Poi dog (Mutt)
Talk story (Have a conversation, discuss) "I go talk story with all my blogger friends."
I guess that's all pau for now. Pau is finished in Hawaiian.
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| shave ice or ice shave |
Here's an explanation from Wikipedia.
Here are some other fun phrases that Art and I thought of. Ron of Waikiki, L. from W., Cloudia and my other Hawaiian buddies, go come jump in any time you like, yeah.
Shut da light or Go pio da light. (Turn off the light.)
You like go kau kau? (Would you like to go and get something to eat?)
No stay here. (It's not here. The here is pronounced more like heeah.)
Stay come. (It's arrived.) example: "The letter stay come."
No stay come. (It or he or she hasn't arrived.)
Stuck nose. (Congestion) example: "You get stuck nose or what?"
Buckaloose (I don't remember using this phrase but Joanne, my childhood buddy says we do use it. It means mayhem or being out of control.) "It went go buckaloose."
Stink-eye (Nasty look) Example: "He when give me the stink eye."
Poi dog (Mutt)
Talk story (Have a conversation, discuss) "I go talk story with all my blogger friends."
I guess that's all pau for now. Pau is finished in Hawaiian.
Fascinating:-) I imagine it's hard for a stranger to follow when all around are speaking pidgin.
ReplyDeleteKau Kau sounds like Khao Khao(eat eat )in Hindi .Pidgin also sounds like the way Khasi people of Meghalaya speak English .Fascinating.
ReplyDeleteSweet. And I only recently found out us Midwesterners have an accent/dialect. What fun. :)
ReplyDeleteI bet it would come back to you pretty quick if you spent time around a lot of people speaking Pidgin. I love hearing regional accents and dialects.
ReplyDeleteThat is really fun. I know dialects and pidgin English is used everywhere it's spoken. I've often wondered how someone learning the language would deal with the English used in the Deep South. :-)
ReplyDeletewow it is another language-if you use it on your blog we will need a translation...lol!
ReplyDeleteHANABATA - nasal mucous
ReplyDeleteASS WHY HAHD -- that's why it is difficult
SHAKA, BRAH -- hang loose, brother
Hanabata days is child hood.
DeleteHa, I love it!
ReplyDeleteClever. We used to speak in pig latin, we called it. We'd take the first letter of a word, put it on the end and add ay. "How are you" would be owhay reaay ouyay. We'd speak it fast and the adults never really caught on. Haven't thought about that in years. Thanks for the memory jar.
ReplyDeleteI used to know some of these phrases. I still say its all pau. Didn't realize it was pigeon English. Dianne
ReplyDeleteAinokea? I'm still figuring that one out. I even write broken English or funny English.
ReplyDeletePau is used so often in our house...much easier to say. I guess we use pidgin because it is so easy.
Not only are the words pidgin. The manner of speaking is also distinct. Especially if you're from Waianae. My cousin born and raised here spoke pidgin with a very hard "staccato". But today, living in Washington and California and having management jobs there, no trace of any pidgin or that accent left, but I'm sure when he retires back home it will be like it never left him.
L. from W.
L. from W. I think Ainokea would be "I don't care." or "I don't give a flying leap."
ReplyDeleteI've heard that pidgin came about so the plantation workers who all spoke different languages could communicate with each other and the Caucasian bosses in as brief a phrase as they could come up with.
I didn't know that language existed! Kay, I love learning new things from you and especially about all the Hawaiian culture!! Have a great weekend!
ReplyDeleteisn't PAU a Hawaiian word meaning finished, and therefore, not pidgin English?
ReplyDeleteAhem. I have some background in linguistics. "Pidgin" is a dialect of English that incorporates words from all the languages that people brought with them plus Hawaiian. English grammar and vocabulary predominate, so that is why it is a dialect and not a creole (an interlanguage with a simplified grammar) or a true pidgin (a trade language spoken by no one as a native language), in spite of its name. It has varieties, as Kay points out. Almost all Hawaiians can "code switch" quite easily into "standard" English.
ReplyDeleteEnglish is a Creole, by the way, which lost its Anglo-Saxon inflexions after the Norman invasion and picked up much vocabulary from the French of that time, which itself was full of Latin borrowings.
The most famous Creole is, of course, the language spoken by Haitians, which gave interlanguages their name.
oh my gosh i love stinkeye one, thats the best,
ReplyDeleteMe weda stuck nose and fever. Me shut da light to think better tomorrow. DrumMajor
ReplyDeleteLOL! My former co-worker used to speak in pidgin all the time. He always used to say all the time "I goin' go lawn mowah da yahd" instead of saying "I'm going to mow the lawn."
ReplyDeleteI don't hear pidgin too often these days.
Howzit, Kay! I love to hear people speaking pidgin. I bought a Pidgin to the Max book over 25 years ago. Sometimes I ask Arnold to "talk story" to me in pidgin. But when I try to speak it, he ends up laughing because it doesn't sound right -- must be my California accent! My favorite phrase is "da kine". The phrases Arnold uses most often are: "We go stay go" (let's go) and "So, wha' chu tink?" (What do you think?)
ReplyDeleteTanks, eh. Nancy
Interesting and not easy to follow unless you are a local!
ReplyDeleteGigihawaii: Yes, pau is the Hawaiian word for finished. However, it's used a lot when people speak pidgin so I just included it. I wonder what hana means since Pauhana means After work.
ReplyDeleteThen there's moi moi for sleep.
Nancy: Hmmm... I don't know, Nancy. I'm not so sure how local Arnold's pidgin sounds these days. He's sounding pretty mainlandish now that he's spending so much time on your end or piloting in the air. In fact, Gem is right. I don't hear a whole LOT of really old time LOCAL sounding pidgin these days. I miss hearing it.
ReplyDeleteInteresting..I remember an online friend telling me that I had a 'funny accent'...she was from the mid-west and my flat 'a' was funny....
ReplyDeleteRambling Woods: Now that is funny! I was living in the Midwest (Chicago) for 35 years and people could recognize my Midwest accent by the hard 'a'. I didn't even realize it! I can hear it when I'm speaking here in Hawaii though.
ReplyDelete"no can," is an often heard expression with various accentuations in reply to a genius idea or even jocular ribbing analogous to rolling your eyes sign language. Also, "la dis" or "la dat." For example, "not la dat, la dis." Occasionally, "Not dat way," followed up with an immediate, "lolo" [stupid (n)]. Er, "Not that way, Lolo."
ReplyDeleteRon: I was just waiting and waiting for you. I knew you'd come up with a good one. LOL
ReplyDeleteDrum Major: If you were in Hawaii, someone might give you some tea with hi ling mui in it or ume (pickled plum).
Hattie: Thanks, Marianne! You explained it better than I ever could.
Gigi: I didn't put your name in the post because I've never heard you use pidgin. However, oh yes, hanabata is extremely well used in Hawaii. Not to be gross, but hana is nose in Japanese. Bata must be butter. Yikes... TMI!
Very interesting! Thanks for the information.
ReplyDeleteI love regional accents -- my favorite pidgin phrase my ex learned when he was stationed at Pearl Harbor was "Mo Bettah" (sp.?) I didn't know I had an accent until we moved from Toledo to NE Ohio and was told that I talked funny.
ReplyDeleteI remember reading pidgin long ago when I read Mitchner's Hawaii. Every once in a while a phrase will still pop in my head.
ReplyDeleteFun post!
Kay Dennison: I love mo bettah! Yes, that is used a lot too.
ReplyDeleteWait a minute. Isn't Toledo, Ohio pretty much close to NE Ohio? Hmmm.... I think South side of Chicago also has a slightly different sound from the north.
Linda Reeder: Wow! You have really got a good memory!
Kay: Toledo is in NW Ohio on the Michigan border. And you can tell a Northern Ohioan from a Southern Ohioan the minute they open their mouth and I bet that's the same in Illinois, too!
ReplyDeleteKay Dennison: Aha! Now you know that geography was not my strong subject. :-)
ReplyDeleteKavita: I just looked up kau kau and found this on Reggie's Kau Kau Time Blog.
ReplyDelete"Kaukau" is a pidgin slang word meaning "food" or "to eat." The Hawaiian term for food is `ai. The two theories on the origin of the word "kaukau" are the Hawaiian word for table, pâkaukau, and the Chinese word for food, chow chow. In Hawaii we say "We go kaukau!", I would say, "I hungry I like kaukau!" or "Let's kaukau!"
I had no idea! You learn something new all the time. It's so interesting that it means the same thing in Hindi!
English itself is a mixture of Celtic, Viking language, French, Saxon and Latin. We have many loanwords in Dutch. Nowadays "street" language is popular among young North Africans in the Netherlands. I cannot understand it at all. It all shows that a language is living and growing.
ReplyDelete"Thnx" for the interesting post.The written language is changing as well.
don't forget "hemo" (hem oh) which means to take apart, remove, but has been bastardized to also mean in a gross state of disarray, as in a very ugly guy. I get that a lot.
ReplyDeleteAinokea is one I've heard recently but it's not pidgin, I think it's a contraction of "I don't care." but the meaning is baffling to me. If you truly don't care why would you place a bumper sticker on your car declaring your indifference? Why would you want people to know that you don't care? Unless really you DO care about what people think of you but you are really more interested in establishing the indifferent facade so you LOOK cool? Idiocy. Just throw a rock at da buggah and be done with it. Hemo 'em li dat.
It's always fascinating to hear people talk. All of us used to have to do mandatory menial employment in places like restaurants etc where you run into folks from all over, and it became a game, with me, to try to get closest to their geographical roots just by listening to them. The proper King's english from our friends over the pond, the Aussie twang, g'day mate; and the slightly more distorted New Zealanders, which sound like Aussies on steroids. Jodie Foster had that weird lisp, what did Hannibal say? desperately West Virginian?
walt
Lol, I goin bade den, cuz I stay all hemo la'dat.
DeleteWe call this snowcone.
ReplyDeletePriceless, Kay!
ReplyDeleteI would never have guessed what most of those mean! ;)
ReplyDeleteWot? Boddah u? (Are you disturbed by this?) Or you can add "why" instead of "wot". (Why? Boddah u?)
ReplyDeleteBumbye ( eventually) Choke (A vast amount) Sometimes you can add words from different cultures - Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, etc...Hana hou (once more, again) Lun chow wa (lunch hour) nah, nah just kidding. I made that up. sukoshi, pidgin: skoshi (little bit) manang pronounced mah-nung (female older than you) And manong pronounced mah-nong ( male older than you). Here are more slangs: Try wait ( just a minute ), Geev'um ( give them, go for it), ova'hea ( it's right here), ova'dea (it's over there), weego ( let's go, time to go ) haha, get plenny ( plenty, a lot ) I'm on a roll, I can go on and on. But I goin' stop now cuz ma'fingahz (my fingers) stay soh-wa (sore). Shoots, la'dahz! (okay, until we meet again! )
Love this! Thank you!!!
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