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Hawaiian Pidgin | |
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Hawaiʻi Creole English | |
Native to | Hawaii (Hawaiʻi), United States |
Native speakers | 600,000 (2015)[1] 400,000 L2 speakers |
English Creole
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Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | hwc |
Glottolog | hawa1247 |
Linguasphere | 52-ABB-dc |
External audio | |
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There is a video of Hawaiian Pidgin English on this news report HERE |
Hawaiian Pidgin (alternately, Hawaiʻi Creole English or HCE, known locally as Pidgin) is an English-based creole language spoken in Hawaiʻi. An estimated 600,000 residents of Hawaiʻi speak Hawaiian Pidgin natively and 400,000 speak it as a second language.[2][3][4][5] Although English and Hawaiian are the two official languages of the state of Hawaiʻi,[6] Hawaiian Pidgin is spoken by many residents of Hawaiʻi in everyday conversation and is often used in advertising targeted toward locals in Hawaiʻi. In the Hawaiian language, it is called ʻōlelo paʻi ʻai – "hard taro language".[7] Hawaiian Pidgin was first recognized as a language by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2015. However, Hawaiian Pidgin is still thought of as lower status than the Hawaiian and English languages.[2]
Despite its name, Hawaiian Pidgin is not a pidgin, but rather a full-fledged, nativized and demographically stable creole language.[8] It did, however, evolve from various real pidgins spoken as common languages between ethnic groups in Hawaiʻi.
Although 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. Some speakers of Hawaiian Pidgin tend to code switch between or mix the language with standard English. This has led to a distinction between pure "heavy Pidgin" and mixed "light Pidgin".[9]
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