11-08-2011, 02:24 PM
Kelena, you're right, although if you listen to really thick pidgin, good luck extracting the English sense from it.
If you think about why there is pidgin, it was inevitably going to be English-dominated. Hawaiian pidgin really got going on the plantations. The master language was English; it was never Hawaiian. Most of the working population on the plantations was not Hawaiian.
There is pride in being local. You don't need to be Hawaiian or hapa Hawaiian to have pride in your island heritage.
If you look at other pidgin languages most are going to be based on the language of the rulers, the dominators, the enslavers, the masters. So it is part of post-colonial politics to proudly embrace the language of the formerly oppressed. There is so much more to the bond than language alone.
btw, as I understand it, there wasn't a unified Hawaiian language until Kamehameha I unified the islands under his rulership. Someone who is a real student of the Hawaiian language can correct that, elaborate on it. I have never studied Hawaiian language, only listened to pronunciation and paid attention to spelling.
Before I got here I had studied French, German, and Italian intensively at various times, with a smattering of Japanese, and managed to forget more than half I ever learned ... so I just didn't feel like getting into more language study. Enough learning and forgetting already. [
]
My admiration to those who take on the challenge. [
]
If you think about why there is pidgin, it was inevitably going to be English-dominated. Hawaiian pidgin really got going on the plantations. The master language was English; it was never Hawaiian. Most of the working population on the plantations was not Hawaiian.
There is pride in being local. You don't need to be Hawaiian or hapa Hawaiian to have pride in your island heritage.
If you look at other pidgin languages most are going to be based on the language of the rulers, the dominators, the enslavers, the masters. So it is part of post-colonial politics to proudly embrace the language of the formerly oppressed. There is so much more to the bond than language alone.
btw, as I understand it, there wasn't a unified Hawaiian language until Kamehameha I unified the islands under his rulership. Someone who is a real student of the Hawaiian language can correct that, elaborate on it. I have never studied Hawaiian language, only listened to pronunciation and paid attention to spelling.
Before I got here I had studied French, German, and Italian intensively at various times, with a smattering of Japanese, and managed to forget more than half I ever learned ... so I just didn't feel like getting into more language study. Enough learning and forgetting already. [
]My admiration to those who take on the challenge. [
]
