Talk:Hawaiian Pidgin
From Academic Kids
Help!
Eh, I nevah know Pidgin stay so complicated! I think I've probably got this article going to a good start, and touched on the basics, but anyone who wants to really delve into detail on this article, e.g. grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, etc....eh, chance 'em! :) KeithH 07:13, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- Hawaiian Pidgin seems to be a dialect of english, rather than a separate language. (Unlike Tok pisin, which largely is unintelligible to a speaker of standard english.) To an outside viewer, it seems to be similar to Ebonics. What do you think?
Ho! How you call Pidgin a creole language? Its a dialect brah! I gon' get bold, and change da' category!
- Wot!!! Like beef?!? :) :) Nah...I can see your point. The last thing I want is to get into an edit war. Sure it's a dialect, as in a variant of English. AND, it fits the definition of pidgin, when two or more language groups improvise a common language so that they can communicate. Hawaiian, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, English..you can't get much different. AND, since most locals nowadays learned Pidgin from grandma, from mom and dad, from the schoolyard, we've become native speakers...that's the point when a pidgin becomes a creole. So just think of creole as the most specific term. And as for intelligibility, just put yourself in the shoes of a tourist from Nebraska visiting the islands for the first time and overhearing two locals speaking full-on Pidgin...'nuff said. :) KeithH 06:04, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
try scots for unintelligible dialects
Well, I don't want an edit war either, so I surrender. I suppose I'm interpreting the definitions of dialect pidgin and creole language to mean that Hawaiian Pidgin is a dialect of English, not a separate language, so therefore it couldn't be considered a Creole language. I was going to prove my point by pointing out that if you want to hear unintelligible versions of English, then go to Scotland. (I lived there for a few months) But then I looked up scots language and the article acknowledges the dispute between calling it a dialect or a language. And they fall on the side of calling it a separate language.
Here's what they said about the dispute:
Whether the varieties of Lowland Scots are dialects of English or constitute a separate language in their own right is often disputed. There is little doubt that, had Scotland remained independent, Lowland Scots would be regarded as a separate language from English. This has happened in Norway with Norwegian. Norwegian, once regarded as a dialect of Danish, has been regarded as a language in its own right since Norwegian independence in the 19th century. All the same, the British government now accepts Lowland Scots as a regional language and has recognised it as such under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
--Frogcat 01:31, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
