More than half the population in Hawaiʻi speaks Pidgin, an English-based creole language that emerged on the islands’ plantations in the 19th century. That’s according to the U.S. Census.
One linguist is setting out to prove her theory that speaking Pidgin could give folks an advantage in learning the Hawaiian language.
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Hawaiian language professor Ali Rozet has been using Pidgin, or ʻōlelo paʻiʻai, to engage her ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi students for the past 14 years. She said there are similarities in vocabulary, sentence structure, and even intonation.
“Paipai au i ka ʻōlelo paʻiʻai ma ka papa i mea e aʻo ai ka haumāna i ka ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi. Maha ka naʻau, ʻoi aʻe ke aʻo."
She said when students are comfortable, they learn more. If students grew up in a Pidgin-speaking household, then she wants to meet them where they are.
“Ke komo ka haumāna i loko o ka lumi papa, lawe pū ʻo ia i kona ʻohana. Lawe pū ʻo ia i nā loina o ka hale. Inā ʻo ka ʻōlelo paʻiʻai kou ʻōlelo, e ʻōlelo i ka ʻōlelo paʻiʻai."
Michelle Kamigaki-Baron, a Ph.D. student in linguistics at the University of British Columbia, is exploring the relationship between ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi and Pidgin for her dissertation.
“We do know that on the word level, it's related to Hawaiian. But also, at the sentence level,” Kamigaki-Baron said. “You could say 'Ono da laulau,' or something like that in pidgin. And that would be really similar to 'ono ka laulau.'”
The Honolulu native is studying how Pidgin speakers might have an advantage in learning ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi. Kamigaki-Baron actually moved to Canada to study with linguists like Jen Hay, who published a similar study comparing Māori and Māori-accented English.
"Jen Hay was one person who found that basically, people who just spoke English in Aotearoa had different degrees of just innate knowledge of Māori. But none of these participants even studied Māori before," Kamigaki-Baron said. "So, they're all just kind of picking it up because there's, you know, TV shows or in different kinds of cultural kind of demonstrations or, you know, at the airport when they speak. And because of that, they found that they were able to sort of perform just as well as Māori speakers, fluent Māori speakers on certain tasks."
Kamigaki-Baron’s project takes these similarities a step further to see whether they could be harnessed in some way to give Pidgin speakers an advantage in learning ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, where it can be utilized in a classroom setting or in an app like Duolingo.
The online study uses various psycholinguistic tools including analyzing eye movement.
“So, if it's a hard task you basically have a different eye motion than you will with an easier task. So that’s just one way that we're gonna see which one is easier for the student, which one is requiring less cognitive load is what they call it,” Kamigaki-Baron told HPR. “But basically, it's what’s harder for your brain to do. And we think that Pidgin might be making things a little easier.”
But the Pidgin of today has evolved from its plantation roots, said UH Hilo Hawaiian language professor Larry Kimura. And even before then, ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi had its own Pidgin.
“I ke au kahiko, ua loaʻa i ka paʻiʻai ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi. ʻO kā Mitchie e noiʻi nei, he paʻiʻai ʻōlelo haole,” Kimura said, “But beyond that, there’s more to the Hawaiian language than simply comparing it to what we know as Pidgin today.”
Rozet sees the benefit of using Pidgin to increase access to ‘ōlelo Hawaiʻi education. But if she had to choose between Pidgin or ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi in the classroom…
“E koho ana au i ka ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi ma mua. ʻO ia wale nō."
She'd choose the Hawaiian language.
Kamigaki-Baron said her inspiration for the study came from her grandfather Tadashi Yoshida, a trilingual fisherman from Hōnaunau. Despite speaking Japanese, Hawaiian and Pidgin, she said her grandfather wasn't considered "smart" by Western colonial constructs.
“We hear the same thing with ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi. Some people will say ‘Oh you’re learning that, what’s the use in it?’ Those kinds of attitudes are not from us, and I don’t think they're based in truth,” Kamigaki-Baron said. “They were based on something that somebody was telling us in order to keep themselves in power. And it's all over the world. And I think it's a lot of deconstructing that mentality that really gives us our strength.”
Kamigaki-Baron is still looking for participants for the online study – mainly ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi speakers who also speak Pidgin, but also speakers of any language who may have had exposure to Pidgin.
For more information visit tinyurl.com/talk-pidgin.
