Talk:Hawaiian Pidgin
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[edit] Malcontributions
If you can't actually speak Hawaiian Pidgin, do not edit this article. You'll just introduce errors into it.
[edit] Help!
Eh, I nevah know Pidgin stay so complicated! I think I've probably got this article going to a good start, and touched on the basics, but anyone who wants to really delve into detail on this article, e.g. grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, etc....eh, chance 'em! :) KeithH 07:13, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- Hawaiian Pidgin seems to be a dialect of english, rather than a separate language. (Unlike Tok pisin, which largely is unintelligible to a speaker of standard english.) To an outside viewer, it seems to be similar to Ebonics. What do you think?
Ho! How you call Pidgin a creole language? Its a dialect brah! I gon' get bold, and change da' category!
- Wot!!! Like beef?!? :) :) Nah...I can see your point. The last thing I want is to get into an edit war. Sure it's a dialect, as in a variant of English. AND, it fits the definition of pidgin, when two or more language groups improvise a common language so that they can communicate. Hawaiian, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, English..you can't get much different. AND, since most locals nowadays learned Pidgin from grandma, from mom and dad, from the schoolyard, we've become native speakers...that's the point when a pidgin becomes a creole. So just think of creole as the most specific term. And as for intelligibility, just put yourself in the shoes of a tourist from Nebraska visiting the islands for the first time and overhearing two locals speaking full-on Pidgin...'nuff said. :) KeithH 06:04, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
If Hawaiian Creole English isn't actually a creole, then why are there such differences in da Pidgin and standard English? Locals will constantly switch between both "dialects", (what linguists call code switching), and each language variety contains context bound information or social commentary about Hawaiian culture and social relationships. Will code switching prove that HCE or Pidgin English is really a seperate language from standard English? Why bother to switch at all if they're the same language?
[edit] try scots for unintelligible dialects
Well, I don't want an edit war either, so I surrender. I suppose I'm interpreting the definitions of dialect pidgin and creole language to mean that Hawaiian Pidgin is a dialect of English, not a separate language, so therefore it couldn't be considered a Creole language. I was going to prove my point by pointing out that if you want to hear unintelligible versions of English, then go to Scotland. (I lived there for a few months) But then I looked up scots language and the article acknowledges the dispute between calling it a dialect or a language. And they fall on the side of calling it a separate language.
Here's what they said about the dispute:
Whether the varieties of Lowland Scots are dialects of English or constitute a separate language in their own right is often disputed. There is little doubt that, had Scotland remained independent, Lowland Scots would be regarded as a separate language from English. This has happened in Norway with Norwegian. Norwegian, once regarded as a dialect of Danish, has been regarded as a language in its own right since Norwegian independence in the 19th century. All the same, the British government now accepts Lowland Scots as a regional language and has recognised it as such under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
--Frogcat 01:31, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Creole or dialect?
I would agree with those who dispute its status as a creole. As has been said, when compared to other creoles like Sranan Tongo or Tok Pisin, its grammatical structure is very much like any other English dialect. It might have been a creole in the past, but if so it seems to have gone through enough "decreolization" (by increased contact with standard American English) so that its creole origins are not apparent anymore.
- Why not avoid the issue entirely and use the term polyglot? the grammar is substantially different, I think the point people are trying to make is that much of the vocabulary is similar. "Jesus wen go down" doesn't make any sense in a traditional english (grammar) sense, but the meaning can (almost) be derived from context and vocabulary. Avriette 05:02, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Help?
Please see discussion here. It's gotten kind of ugly, and I would like assistance from somebody who is formally trained in linguistics, or at least has a better grasp of the subject than I do. I'm more of a hobbyist, and I know the terminology. However, I think in this case, it's a grey area. I would also ask that before making a quick judgement based on the nature of the article, that you think about some of the comments. I am fairly certain we're not talking about a slang here, as it's a constructed grammar, which is dynamic. I also don't think we have a pidgin. A dialect may be the right word, but because it is so drastically different, I have doubts about that. Really, I'd just like a chance to discuss the matter. I'll be placing this comment over at Singlish as well, as I think there may be people there who could help. Thanks. Avriette 15:42, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
- I might be of some help. I attend the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa for linguistics. There is a research group on campus which specializes in the study of HCE called “Da Pidgin Coup”. I can consult their members if anything with serious depth is necessary. Otherwise, I can work from what I know of Pidgin both as a learner, a friend of several native speakers, and as a linguist with more than passing knowledge of it. BTW, I informally call it “Pidgin” with a capital <P> because that’s the term I use daily and with speakers. It’s not an official term of any sort, but it will suffice here.
- First off, the old dialects of Pidgin that were spoken up through the 1920s were significantly influenced by Hawaiian. It was at the time nearly unintelligible to English speakers without a long period of custom, essentially passive second language learning. As the English speaking population of the territory increased, particularly with the influx of military personnel during and after WWII, Pidgin began to take on more and more features of English. What is spoken today is much closer to English than what was spoken in the 1920s.
- However, Pidgin is today still not English. I offer the example sentence “How come I go stay come and you go stay go?” which is essentially unintelligible to native English speakers even when written in the purely English orthography. It means “Why are you leaving when I just got here?” in a rough translation. In English it is essentially meaningless gibberish.
- There is on the otherhand a very obvious cline between what speakers often call “deep Pidgin” and what is known as Hawaiian English, the dialect of English spoken by nearly all people raised in Hawaiʻi. The two languages share many features, such as the “downfall question” pattern inherited from Hawaiian, a lack of interdental fricatives, etc. Most Pidgin speakers today can shift at will between a nearly pure Pidgin and a nearly pure English to varying degrees, however there are still a number of people even in the bustling city of Honolulu who have only a passive knowledge of either Pidgin or English and cannot speak it.
- The current theory that I’ve overheard in the hallway is that basically Pidgin is undergoing a gradual shift towards English, but that in the mouths and minds of many speakers this shift is not complete. As such, Pidgin, is still a separate language and not a dialect of English.
- Feel free to ask any more questions and I’ll try to answer them or find answers for them. — Jéioosh 03:05, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Portuguese connection
Though I feel it is valid to say that Portuguese has had an impact on HCE, I do not care for the examples cited.
To say that "You no can do dat" results from Portuguese syntax is making a massive assumption. In many languages the negation of phrases results from using the word for no before the verb (English is a rarity because of our modal verbs, auxiliary verbs and syntax reflecting them). Wo bu shi meiguoren (Mandarin - without tone markers - Chinese for "I'm not American.) -- the order would be seen literally as "I no am American." Now the Portuguese: Eu nao sou (norte)americano. "I no am American."
What can you draw from this? Both Chinese and Portuguese are purported to be contributing languages to the formation of the pidgin and subsequent creole in Hawai'i.
Also, the "dis-dat-dem" construction is referenced as following Spanish/Portuguese form - I assume the writer means phonetically speaking. In reality, the sounds of [theta] and [edh] (both written as "th" in English and respectively illustrated in the Standard American English words: think and leather) are both infrequent in contemporary languages across the globe. In Europe, the sounds are most common in English, Spanish (central Iberian variety), and Greek - though they are not limited to those languages worldwide, nor are they both necessarily present in any given language's soundstock just because one is present. I follow from this by saying that depending on the proximity of the sound to a more familiar sound in any other language (French, Portuguese, or Chinese for example), a given speaker of one of these languages will try to approximate the sounds that they cannot make when speaking English. So, let's say you're German, perhaps /s/ and /z/ respectively come closer to the sounds of [theta] and [edh]. In many Spanish speakers' versions, /t/ and /d/ (respectively may come closer. So, again, to say that only a Portuguese speaker would make these approximations is a fallacy of logic.
The last I will mention is familiar: the comparison of the "-da" ending and its frequency in English. What you have here is the coincidental and totally superficial link of modern Portuguese's tendency to pronounce an unstressed final "a" as a [schwa] and the fact that in several dialects of English, the ending "-er" is often pronounced without rhoticity - that is to say that the final vowel will be made often as a [schwa] and the final "r" will not be pronounced (other dialects of English modify this final cluster of "er" differently). Also, the examples cited do not have a -da ending in the Portuguese translation, nor related words. Brada (brother) is "irmao" in Portuguese, for example.
I'm just a former student of Anthro. Linguistics and a Portuguese speaker - and, therefore, I do not think my research and contribution would be apt for this section, but I urge someone with better knowledge on this subject to post something more empirical. I'm not trying to berate the contributer(s), but the evidence used to support the Portuguese connection is weak and often a popular convention in several languages.
