Template talk:hwc

This lect, usually called Hawaiian Creole English (HCE) or Pidgin, is theoretically an English-based creole. However, I have studied Pacific English-based creoles and I find that this is nothing like them. It's actually closer to the gangsta slang that I hear in the poorer parts of New York City and Los Angeles, except the Spanish borrowings are replaced with Hawaiian words thrown in for emphasis (with English pronunciation, of course, so initial glottal stops and other difficult features of Hawaiian are usually dropped). Unlike real creoles, this can be read without any prior training. For example, take this magazine article in HCE, titled "Da Muddah Tongue". Although occasional words like might prove difficult, it's not too hard to understand. Or take this HCE Bible, which has an introduction that's easy to read if you just sound out phonetically spelled words as if they were English. There are almost no Hawaiian borrowings in that text. Compare a text from a real creole, like Bislama (from Vanuatu), in which the following line was written: "Hem i kavremap gud long kaliko, nao i putum hem i slip long wan bokis we oltaim ol man ol i stap putum gras long hem, blong ol anamol ol i kakae." Were you able to tell that was a selection from the Bible describing the birth of Jesus? In contrast, HCE seems quite simply to be an extreme dialect of English, but not its own language. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 06:37, 29 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree. Strong delete (merge into ). As you noted there, I'm after mentioning on RFM that even though the kind of English that's spoken in Hawai'i and the kind that's spoken in Ireland have a gwall of differences in pronunciation and orthography, and even grammar and vocabulary, they're not different languages. Even knawvshawling amadans, alannas, and run-of-the-mill British and American English speakers who don't know what Hiberno-English speakers mean by "gwall", "knawvshawling amadans" and "alannas" ought to have no problem understanding so-called 'Hawai'ian Creole'. It's not a separate language. - -sche (discuss) 07:35, 29 December 2012 (UTC)


 * PS: I think the existing entries should all be tagged with so that they can be correctly categorised once under the English L2 header. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 05:02, 30 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete. I've been bothered by this, too. The pidgin spoken in Hawaii in the 19th century might have been different, but apparently it was never written down. The present "pidgin" is just a form of English. --Makaokalani (talk) 15:27, 6 February 2013 (UTC)