Hawaiian Pidgin has been influenced by many different languages, including Portuguese, Hawaiian, American English, and Cantonese. Since such sugarcane plantations often hired workers from many different countries, a common language was needed in order for the plantation workers to communicate effectively with each other and their supervisors. It supplanted, and was influenced by, the existing pidgin that Native Hawaiians already used on plantations and elsewhere in Hawaiʻi.

Hawaiian Pidgin originated on sugarcane plantations in 1835 as a form of communication used between Hawaiian speaking Native Hawaiian residents, English speaking residents, and foreign immigrants. Heavier Pidgin is more common in rural areas and in older speakers. This has led to a distinction between pure “heavy Pidgin” and mixed “light Pidgin”. There is also tendency for many Hawaiian Pidgin speakers to mix the language with standard English. It did, however, evolve from various real pidgins spoken as common languages between ethnic groups in Hawaiʻi.Īlthough not completely mutually intelligible with Standard American English, Hawaiian Pidgin retains a high degree of mutual intelligibility with it compared to some other English-based creoles, such as Jamaican Patois, in part due to its relatively recent emergence. ĭespite its name, Hawaiian Pidgin is not a pidgin, but rather a full-fledged, nativized and demographically stable creole language. However, Hawaiian Pidgin is still thought of as lower status than the Hawaiian and English languages. Hawaiian Pidgin was first recognized as a language by the U.S.

In the Hawaiian language, it is called ʻōlelo paʻi ʻai – 'pounding-taro language'. Although English and Hawaiian are the two official languages of the state of Hawaiʻi, Hawaiian Pidgin is spoken by many Hawaiian residents in everyday conversation and is often used in advertising targeted toward locals in Hawaiʻi.

An estimated 600,000 residents of Hawaiʻi speak Hawaiian Pidgin natively and 400,000 speak it as a second language. Hawaiian Pidgin (alternately, Hawaiʻi Creole English or HCE, known locally as Pidgin) is an English-based creole language spoken in Hawaiʻi. There is a video of Hawaiian Pidgin English on this news report HERE

Learning pidgin english