Why is it that if I go to Spain and speak Spanish to the locals, or if I got to Italy and speak Italian..?
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 at
6:06 pm
...they find it endearing, but if I go to Hawai'i and try to speak Pidgin to the locals they find it insulting?
Sorry Gilliegr, but you're wrong. Kama'aina (Hawai'i residents) speak Pidgin and English. Even most Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) speak Pidgin and English. A very small percentage of Hawai'i residents speak Hawaiian.
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Tagged with: kanaka • locals • pidgin
Filed under: Italian - Written and Spoken
The key word is "try."
It is either Can or No Can.
Don’t ask me to explain it, it’s just the way it is. The closest thing I can think of is that it is slang. If you get to East LA, or Harlem or The Bronx and try to speak slang, it’s probably cute for about 1 minute.
I’d have to go with Hawaii Home on this one…since it’s really just slang, it’s kinda personal between those local to the islands. I don’t think anyone speaking pidgin wouldn’t understand you perfectly well in English – I think that would have something to do with it, too.
You either learn it at home growing up or you don’t. And that is true even if you grew up here. It’s fine to use commonly accepted local lingo like "pau", "mauka" & "makai". But you really just can’t sling pidgin unless you grew up speaking it. You come across like the kid on the playground who is trying desperately to fit in & just comes off kinda… well, pathetic.
Hawai’ins don’t speak Pidgin. They speak English and/or Hawai’in. That’s why they’re insulted. And probably baffled.
Pidgin is a) a dialect of English born on the sugar plantations. Watch the 1994 motion picture "Picture Bride" to see what that’s all about.
b) a way to mark yourself as Local with a capital L.
c) a way to keep people like you from knowing what the Locals are talking about.
d) technically a creole, since generations of kids have grown up speaking it as their native dialect, but if you speak it, you only call it Hawaiian Creole English when you are making fun of the folks up at the University!
e) Working. Class.
f) a way to make people know you are speaking from the gut, the way my Freedom Hills of Alabama accent comes out when I’m mad, drunk, or tired. If you are faking it, well, that’s just all wrong.
g) not a national language like Spanish or Italian, but a minority dialect spoken out at the edge of the American empire, in a land where a queen was overthrown by force and kept a prisoner in her own palace because American sugar planters didn’t think they had enough power to secure their fortunes.
Speaking Pidgin when you didn’t grow up speaking it is like trying to take a shortcut to a local identity. After a few years, you start to pick the inflections and pronunciations without realizing it. If you don’t notice it, your audience won’t notice it either. It’s all about being natural.