Like a tarnished Badge of Honor : Hawaiian Pidgin English

My siblings and I speak Hawaiian Pidgin English fluently.

My cousins on both sides of my family, at least the majority of them, also speak this South-Pacific version of ebonics. Some of my mother’s siblings speak it, and one of my father’s two siblings speak it, albeit not as often as he can. That’s ok though, because Hawaiian Pidgin English is only now becoming one of those dialects that are recognized like many other cultural icons.

Too many Hawaiians were brought up with the idea that speaking Pidgin English is somehow a bad thing. Hawaiian mothers, even those of us born and raised in the mainland, teach our children not only to understand this language, but also to speak it, because just like in certain Spanish speaking circles, you want to know what is being said. My father’s family who still live in the islands have a hard time believing that any mainland born Hawaiian child has not only the ability but also, in some small way, the very audacity to speak a language that until Disney’s Lilo and Stitch made it popular, was thought of as something that only a select few could speak and understand.

I am a good Hawaiian mom. My children know that it is not a good thing when their mother begins to speak in Pidgin English, and they are smart enough to tell their little friends that “when my mom sounds like Lilo and Stitch, get the hell outta the way- she’s PISSED!”

Hawaiian Pidgin English is a language comprised of both the Hawaiian and the English language. In the recent past it was that many mainland Hawaiians were ashamed of being able to understand such a dialect. ” We don’t like it – it makes us sound like idiots…” In fact, the only thing that makes anyone sound like an idiot is someone who is not willing to be part of their culture. My kids and I, even their haole father, can carry on a conversation in Pidgin, enough to save my husband’s white okole when he is on the “wrong side” of the island of O’ahu, and enough to score himself the local rates at the local golf courses – yes, even Turtle Bay.

There is comfort in knowing a language that is somewhat more of a marker for those of us whom, when in a strange place where it seems that people who are of the same thinking and origins are no where to be found, gives us that small sense of familiarity, that sense of belonging, that sense of feeling like no matter where we are, we are home. My Hawaii is not out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean – my Hawaii is where I call home. It is not geographical but rather spiritual and more inside than outside.

This is the reason that throughout the world, Hawaiians know that if we can speak the language, we can find others who are like us, who share the same likes, dislikes, whatevahs…as the rest of those who can call themselves Lost Hawaiians.

When I moved to the desert I did so that I could find myself another way of not wanting to kill people who share DNA with me. And as always, I managed, or rather, they managed to find me, those people who share DNA with me. But it was not so bad, because even as we did not know each other, we knew each other. We knew what a “Haole laule’a” was (a joke and a play on the term “Ho’olaule’a” as it relates to my old neighborhood in Helendale, CA), and we knew what it meant when my Auntie Leanne said “Eh, you folks like come inside fo’eat or you like go home fo’eat?” We knew why it was that at the very few Hawaiian households in Silver Lakes there were slippahs and shoes outside the door, and why it was that there were two brooms – the one that Auntie bought at the 99cents only store for the floor, and the Ni’ihau broom that was kept next to the front door in an ‘ipu…the same kind that sat next to mine.

Because it is all Hawaiian, and the language is only the marker for who we are, and it is what we use to identify ourselves and each other when we are someplace that is foreign to us.  It makes the saying “Wherever I am – THAT is my Hawaii” true. There are many Hawaiian people in California, from the tip of the Northern part of it, all the way to the Border Towns that split the United States from Mexico. Wherever we are, that is Hawaii, that is home, even if there is no beach to claim to.

People the world over are yearning to learn what was once a language that was a marker for ignorance. It was something that unrefined people spoke because they had no education, no refinement, no social network beyond that of the beach boys and the surfah girls, their old tutu auntie on the Windward side of the island, and the high school drop outs who hadd no aspirations other than smoking pakalolo, drinking beers and eating opihi all day long whilst waiting for the perfect wave.

These days, though, it is no longer like a tarnished badge of honor. Everyday there is a new reason as to why we should be proud of knowing what it was that that nice little Tutu Auntie said to you about what time gon’ get on dah addah side da island fo’eat lunch…to which you can reply, “Auntie, I have a few errands to run first but when I am pau I will take you to the Olive Garden fo’eat dat little kine breads wit’ da soup look like stew but wit’ macaronis inside um…”

It is good to be Hawaiian, even on the mainland, especially on the mainland. Wherever we are, that is our Hawaii, and now thanks to the proliferation of Hawaiians on the mainland, we also have the language…

MAPU