The best – and funniest – book about Hawaiian pidgin is called Pidgin To Da Max and is available in bookstores throughout Hawaii and from .Ī final word of advice: Until you really know your way around and until you get both the context and the inflections exactly right, leave the pidgin to the “locals” … udduhwise by-m-by one local guy going bus’ you up.Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 21:23:29 Bookplateleaf 0004 Boxid IA151601 Boxid_2 CH120121109-BL1 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City Honolulu, Hawai'i Date-raw January 1981 Donorįriendsofthesanfranciscopubliclibrary External-identifier Or better yet: Gawge Bush? Fo’ grade, da buggah get one beeg puka! Or even: My zip code is nine-six-seven-puka-eight. Or: I drove around the block three times before I found a puka. Or: I had to go to the dentist because I had a puka. One of the more flexible of our pidgin words is puka (pronounced POO-kuh) which is the Hawaiian word for “hole” … as in the damn dog dug a puka right in the middle of our back yard.īut also: the County guys is patching a big puka in the road. If something was a total failure, say it was a bus’ egg. If mama’s teriyaki chicken is really good, tell her it broke da mouth. If a teenager wants to go out for a burger he’ll say You like grind? You meet another local on the street, you say, Howzit? It borrows from Hawaiian and Japanese and Chinese and from the two main Filipino dialects, not to mention some delightful twists given to recognizable English words. Some use it most of the time, others whenever the mood strikes, but it’s colorful and highly descriptive … and a great deal of fun. Visitors to Hawaii are immediately aware of the incredible natural beauty of these islands and that awareness is enhanced the more they travel around this place.īut to me, one of the really interesting and more enjoyable things about Hawaii is the pidgin English that locals use when speaking informally among themselves.
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