Hapa is a Hawaiian language term used to describe a person of mixed Asian or Pacific Islander racial or ethnic heritage.[1][2]
Contents |
In the Hawaiian language, hapa is defined as: portion, fragment, part, fraction, installment; to be partial, less. It is a loan from the English word half. However, in Hawaiian Pidgin (the creole spoken by many Hawaii residents), hapa has an extended meaning of "half-caste" or "of mixed descent". Mary Pukui and Samuel Ebert's Hawaiian Dictionary define hapa as: "of mixed blood, person of mixed blood as in hapa hawaiʻi, part Hawaiian."[3] The word hapa has moved into mainland English.
Used without qualification, hapa is often taken to mean "part White", and is short hand for hapa haole. The term can be used in conjunction with other Hawaiian racial and ethnic descriptors to specify a particular racial or ethnic mixture. Examples of this include:
Pukui states that the original meaning of the word haole was "foreigner". Therefore, all non-Hawaiians can be called haole.[4] In practical terms, however, the term is used as described here as a racial description with the specific exclusion of Portuguese. Portuguese were traditionally considered to be a separate "race" in Hawaii.[5]
Hapa-haole also is the name of a type of Hawaiian music in which the tune and styling are typically Hawaiian, but the lyrics are in English or mostly in English.[6]
|
||||||||||||||||||||||