“Hybolic” means “to talk like one intellectual-kine haole,” according to “Pidgin to Da Max,” the classic HCE reference book created in 1980 by Douglas Simonson (aka Peppo), Pat Sasaki and Ken Sakata. Like “hybolic,” which is the word I’d use to describe OED’s published definition of “hammajang.” And “hammajang” is one of my favorite pidgin words the OED even spells it the way I prefer (alternate forms are “hamajang” and “hemajang”).īut I keep thinking of other words that, perhaps, should have been included. On one hand, as a proud proponent of pidgin (Hawaii Creole English, or HCE), I’m delighted that my native language has been legitimized - sort of - by an internationally recognized and respected resource. Here are 20 words, common in everyday Hawaiian usage, that you should know.I’m still sorting through mixed feelings about this.
Or, as any local might put it: Good t'ing, brush up on da kine, brah, so no make A. The root word of "pidgin" is, in fact, "business." A caveat: Before you go to Hawaii and put your foot in your mouth, it's probably a good idea to clip and save this lexicon for future review. And then there is pidgin, the local patois originated by Chinese immigrants to do business with an easy-to-understand lingo. You probably can get by with a now-and-then "aloha" and a mumbled "mahalo," but to understand what's really going on in Hawaii, you need to know a few basic words like da kine, howzit, and mo bettah.īanned by New England missionaries, who crudely translated into English what they thought they heard, the native tongue survived underground to carry a nation's culture down through generations in warrior chants, hula lyrics, and talk story.
Welcome to Hawaii, the linguistically rich and confusing Islands with not one but two official languages - Hawaiian and English - where the 12-letter alphabet has 7 consonants and 5 vowels, and everybody speaks a little pidgin.
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