Someone writing about his Appalachian dialect defined our dilemma: “It was like proofreading our sentences before we spoke.” To speak correctly, we transposed pidgin to standard English in our heads, like translating a foreign language before uttering words grammatically. When enrolled at the University of Hawaii, a speech class was required to correct our pidgin. When haoles couldn”t understand us, we delighted baffling them, but felt they were condescending if any of them our age tried speaking pidgin to us. Ono means delicious, hapa (mixed) and holoholo (to travel). ![]() Some common examples: saimin (ramen) malasada (doughnuts) chop suey (stir fry) and kaukau (food or to eat). Pidgin includes many words derived from the different ethnic groups. Teachers with pidgin backgrounds weren”t strict about correcting us so we insouciantly continued speaking pidgin. “Try” replaced “please” as in “Try go ax him.” ![]() We called conversations “talking story.” Using a lot of gestures and inflections, we could communicate with the catch-all, “You know da kine …” Pidgin is easy and lazy, and my classmates and I spoke it all through high school. ![]() Influenced by our parents” native tongues, we had difficulty pronouncing double consonant words, especially th in the (which became “da”), wh in what (“wat”) and sk in ask (“ax”). But speaking grammatically was another matter.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |