As a result, it is widely believed that use of proper standard English is a key to career and educational success, and that use of Pidgin is a sign of lower socioeconomic status. However, Pidgin is considered by some to be 'substandard,' or as a 'corrupted' form of English, or even as broken English. For example, the Hawaii-born CEO of one of the largest banks in the state said of the Mainland-born CEO of a competing bank, 'Anytime he wants to debate in pidgin on 'local,' I'm available.' ( )

Knowledge of Pidgin is considered by many to be an important part of being considered 'local,' regardless of racial and socioeconomic background. At the same time, many people who know Pidgin can code-switch between standard American English and Pidgin depending on the situation. Today, most people born or raised in Hawai‘i can speak and understand Pidgin to some extent.

For this reason, linguists generally consider Hawaiian Pidgin to be a creole language. Public school children learned Pidgin from their classmates, and eventually it became the primary language of most people in Hawai‘i, replacing the original languages. In the 19th century and 20th century, Pidgin started to be used outside the plantation between ethnic groups. For example, the word stay in Pidgin has the same meaning as the Portuguese verb estar, meaning 'to be' when referring to a temporary state or location. It has also been influenced to a lesser degree by Spanish spoken by Mexican and Puerto Rican settlers in Hawaii.Įven today, Pidgin English retains some influences from these languages. Japanese loanwords in Hawaii lists some of those words originally from Japanese. As people of other nationalities were brought in to work in the plantations, such as Japanese, Filipinos, and Koreans, Pidgin English acquired words from these languages. It has been influenced by many languages, including Portuguese, Hawaiian, and Cantonese, one of the Chinese languages. It supplanted the pidgin Hawaiian used on the plantations and elsewhere in Hawai'i.

Pidgin English originated as a form of communication used between native and non-native English speakers in Hawai'i.

Hawaiian pidgin to english translation