"Tongue-tied" by hapa-haole--
Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
09 January 1928, Page 6, Column 2.
RECOGNITION FOR "PIDGIN"
Honolulu residents who use "pidgin English" daily in the transaction of a large share of their business have always felt grateful for the convenience of the jargon, but they have never considered it as possessing dignity. Dignified, however, a somewhat similar lingo now is. Following a conference of her administration officers and missionaries, New Guinea has adopted "pidgin' as her official language.
A mixture of languages into one curious but serviceable dialect is almost as old as speech itself. Undoubtedly there were "pidgins" thousands of years ago, when two tribes or races, speaking dissimilar tongues, found a common ground in a few necessary words from each, with local modifications, corruptions and amplifications.
The phrase "pidgin English" is said to have originated on the China coast. where "pidgin" meant "business," and foreign traders and Chinese merchants out of their daily needs evolved a few dozen words which they called "pidgin" or "business English." The pidgin English of Asia is much different from that of the New Guinea, Papua, and other islands far to the south of us; and this South Sea pidgin is, in turn, much different from the mixture of Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, English and other languages which serves to many in Hawaii for expression.
The mixed population of Hawaii developed here, and all the races represented have contributed words and modes of expression to it. While Hawaiian pidgin is not exactly that of the Orient, and that of the South Seas differs somewhat from both, they are about as similar as the talk of the southern mainland, for in stance, is similar to that of the north.
New Guinea's action reminds that hundreds of thousands of persons use pidgin constantly; that Chinese of different provinces, failing to understand one another's dialects. resort to it; that it has a dictionary and a literature of its own, and that about 40 years ago etymologists were urging that it be adopted as the common tongue of the world.
In Hawaii there is no need for "pidgin' (sometimes called "hapa-haole English'') to be either dignified or emphasised by official, recognition. The whole trend here is away from jargon and toward good English, spoken and written. These islands are not so large that their people need speak different tongues One language and that a language spoken a good, clear enunciation, is the ideal for everyday use.
The Stockman's Journal, Omaha,
03 September 1935, Page 6, Column 4.
Attacks Hawaiian "Pidgin English"
Honolulu, Sept. 3. (U.P.)—Pidgin English, the strange ungrammatical conglomeration of half a dozen tongues, must go before Hawaii can expect to contribute to the world's literature, Fannie Hurst, popular American novelist, warned educators here. "Pidgin Englisho has not even the quaintness of a patois," she said, scolding officials for language methods.
She was dismayed that "so considerable an element in this so-called literate population of educated American citizens is permitted to continue to speak an unformed, heavily impeded English"
Miss Hurst believed a rich mine of literature lay imbedded in the "tongue-tied" Hawaiian Islands, but warned that it would never be struck until Hawaii becomes articulate enough to write its own story.
Pidgin English Is Topic In UH Club Publication
The forefather of Hawaii's pidgin English was "hapa haole," dialect used by white traders and whalers in dealing with native Hawaiians; and consisting of English and Hawaiian wards, with Hawaiian grammar predominant. according to an article entitled The Competition of Languages in Hawaii by John Reinecke, which will appear in Social Process in Hawaii, to be published soon by the sociology club of the University of Hawaii.
After the coming of the Chinese in 1876, and the Portuguesee two years later, "hapa haole" became pidgin English. This linguistic medium of exchange was influenced later with the coming of the Japanese and Filipinos, each of whom contributed certain of its words and idiomatic peculiarities to it, Reinecke says.
"As the creole "pidgin" was the class dialect of the immigrant groups, marking them off from the haole population, so the local dialect is still to a great extent a class and racial dialect. marking off the non-haole youth from the haoles," the article states.
"To speak the dialect puts one in a definite class. It is considered somewhat beneath one's dignity as a person educated in English to speak gross "pidgin" except to older people who know no English: at the same time it is considered snobbish and presumptuous to speak without the island intonation. accentuation and other peculiarities. That is being a 'black haole.' "
The Honolulu Advertiser,
25 October 1937, Page 1, Column 3.
Pidgin Languages
Those languages of equivocal status, commonly known as creole dialects, trade jargons. pidgins, or trade languages, form the subject of a dissertation presented by John E. Reinecke, of the Department of Race Relations at Yale University. Dr. Reinecke's research grew out of a study of the linguistic conditions that give rise to the so-called pidgin English of Hawaii, the findings of which are embodied in an essay presented to the University of Hawaii in 1935, and called "Language and Dialect in Hawaii." Searching for a theoretical setting for the Hawaiian Pidgin, the author was led to survey the literature of all similar makeshift tongues.
The major part of his presentation consists of a detailed description of the history and social setting of about 40 of these tongues, ranging from such well known languages as Afrikaans and the talkee-talkee of Suriname to more obscure jargons, such as Sudan-Arabic and the pidgin Eskimo formerly spoken by the whalers along northern Alaska.
The writer treats this problem aspect of interracial contacts. This is reflected in his definition of marginal languages, a term with sociological connotations introduced as a substitute for less comprehensive or inexact terms in general use.
John E. Reinecke, Language and Dialect in Hawaii:
James C. L'Angelle Undergraduate Research University of Nevada, Reno
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