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Author Karel McIntosh, a "Trini Creole" (Trinidad Creole English, a.k.a. TCE) and standard English code-switcher, reflects on how TCE is stigmatized in her homeland, arguing that the language has a rightful and valuable place. Readers may find parallels between the linguistic situation in Hawaii and that in Trinidad.

This is the official linguistic code for Hawaii Creole English, which is documented by an international linguistic mapping system as a "living" and "individual" language, separate from English but sharing a lot with English. Research shows that people who speak one but not the other can hardly understand one another. Hawaii Creole is not considered by linguists to be a subset or dialect of English.

The Charlene Sato Center for Pidgin, Creole and Dialect Studies, established in January 2002 and based at the University of Hawai`i-Mānoa,, conducts research on pidgin and creole languages as well as stigmatized dialects, with a focus on research that can benefit speakers of such varieties. The website offers links to helpful resources on Hawai`i Creole English (HCE) and other creoles, and gives tips for conducting research in this area.

Abstract: The speech community of the Hawaiian Islands is of theoretical interest to both the sociologist and the linguist. The reasons for this are clear. In the first place, it has a linguistic repertoire which is characteristic of multilingual societies. This is a direct consequence of the influx of immigrant labor from China, Korea, the Philippines, Okinawa, Japan, and Portugal and their social and linguistic contacts with the native Hawaiians and the English-speaking colonialists. Hence, Hawaii is a veritable laboratory for sociolinguistic research. Secondly the varieties of speech range extensively and in accordance with the social demands of solidarity and status. This is particularly evident in the phenomenon of code-switching where a native speaker of Hawaiian Creole can either shift towards a dialect of English or towards a variety of immigrant speech when the social context of the situation demands it. Finally, the study of Creole languages such as the one to which this paper is directed has some very interesting implications for the "sociology of knowledge" because a Creole speaker attributes a different cognitive saliency to the lexical relations "push/pull," "bring/take," and "come/go" when he speaks Hawaiian Creole, then when he switches to standard English. These sundry concepts and their relevance to the field of sociolinguistics are the central topics of this paper.

This post might interest those of you wondering whether you can list Hawaii Creole English as a second language on your college application (or, as in this case, once you arrive at college). The comments below the post are interesting as well.

Article about debate about Hawaii Creole in Hawaii public schools. Governor Cayetano quoted, "The only time we should be using pidgin English in the public schools is when they're studying pidgin itself, from a historical or cultural point of view."

While this video has been posted here on the Diigo page before, the bookmark is from 2011 and has very few relevant tags. This short film has many different voices from our community, and it provides the most authentic sounding pidgin that I've been able to find on Youtube, as it shows ordinary people just talking and expressing their relationship with the language, and as it is not performative. I personally discovered it when trying to explain pidgin to a friend from the mainland, and it seems to be a very good tool for providing a solid foundation of understanding about pidgin. Notable speakers within the video include linguist Kent Sakoda, who discusses the formation of pidgins as a whole, the formation of HCE as a result of plantations here in Hawaii, the formation of a few particular common phrases that arose as a combination of various languages, and how HCE is something that binds people together as a community here in Hawaii as well as Pastor Earl Morihara, who speaks on the importance of pidgin to him in a personal sense, elaborating that it's "da language of my heart," and that it comes naturally to him when speaking with others in the Hawaii community.

This is a Hawaii News Now article and video talking about a translation of the Bible into Hawaii Creole English (pidgin), and the audiovisual translation project that arose in conjunction with it. In it, the speakers touch on how pidgin is "one language of da heart," and how messages given in Standard American English won't resonate in the same way that the same messages in pidgin would, which reflects the importance of one's L1 in communication and understanding, particularly in an emotional sense.

This article documents Cornell linguistics professor Joseph Grimes' collaboration with 26 HCE speakers to translate The Bible into Hawai`i Creole English (HCE). Grimes' 12 year project culminated in a 2001 "pidgin" (really HCE) version of the New Testament.

"Many refer to Hawai'i as the melting pot of cultures, and along with that comes a wide range of languages. A recent U.S. census survey looked at languages spoken here in the islands and for the first time Hawaiian Pidgin English was included on that list." Ugh, bad reporting: surely the US Census Bureau meant Hawai`i Creole English (HCE)? But still, interesting that it's receiving federal validation as a bona fide language...

This article talks about how some World Cup games will be broadcast in pidgin for Nigerian and Ghana audiences. I find it fascinating that the world has become more friendly to pidgin and other "informal" languages. I wonder if Hawaii broadcasts and television shows will start to utilize more pidgin and Hawaii Creole English.

This article is about a "new language" that was found in Northern Australia, and is a combination of English and the indigenous languages there. It reminds me a lot of the origin of Hawaii Creole English. The language is called Light Warlpiri, and approximately 300 people in a remote desert community in Northern Australia speak it.