Pidgin English Spoken Here

Before moving to Hawaii the only time I had heard the term Pidgin English was in reference to a type of sign language (I've taken sign language courses). Since Hawaii is a true melting pot of different cultures, you can only imagine how many languages you might hear when you are out and about.

Yesterday I was shopping in a Hallmark at the Windward Mall, the closest one to our house. They had a selection of Hawaiia cards and they caught my eye. Not because of the colorful pictures, but because I could tell they were written in Pidgin. Some of them were so hard to read that I couldn't even make any sense out of them. Some I figured I haven't lived here long enough to understand the humor.

The day we moved into our house, I noticed some of the guys from the moving company talking to each other in a strange language. I thought it was Hawaiian, but it had a lot of slang because I could pick up "da" and "fo" and sort of assimilate that they were meant to be saying "the" and "for". Now I know they were talking Pidgin.

If you stay in Hawaii long enough and talk to long-time locals, you'll hear a little bit of this Pidgin creeping into their normal conversation. The biggest thing I've noticed is how they like to say "yeah" at the end of a sentence. What would be a normal sentence will sound like a question after they say "yeah". Here's an example:

Da Spam musubi ono, yeah?

Translation: The Spam musubi is delicious. (no need for "yeah" on end).

There is even a website called "How to Talk Conversational Pidgin" (http://www.extreme-hawaii.com/pidgin/vocab/). Here are some funny samples from that website:


Aznuts
(that is insane)

Brok' da mout
(tastes delicious, yummy)

Like beef?
(want to fight?)

Panty
(wimp, weakling)

Fut
(passing gas Hawaiian style)

Futsetta
(Boogie Man's mother - I am not making this up!)

And what I would call Hawaiian's signature phrase...(drumroll please)...

Bumbye
(When we get around to it, after awhile)