Pidgin English in Hawaii: A Collection of Short Stories

Abstract

One cannot begin a discussion of pidgin-English in Hawaii without first defining the term. Writings since the thirties use it as a vague term, applying it to anything that is not Standard English. The etymology of "pidgin," usually meaning the English "business," can be traced back to the Chinese “pay-chinn," or "paying money" which is involved in business. Other writers have not been so definite and write only that "pidgin" is a corrupted form of "business" which the Chinese could not pronounce. Pidgin was the language of commerce of the China ports, a language which arose in response to a need for some sort of communication to carry out trade between different people who could not learn the other's language fully. Early immigrants of various nationalities in Hawaii were in the same position as the traders on the China coast. They had to devise a "makeshift" language to communicate with each other.