The Hawaii DOE doesn’t have a policy governing the use of Pidgin in the classroom, leaving it up to teachers to decide how to approach Pidgin. They assert that Pidgin is a creole language that traces back to Hawaii’s rich immigrant history, a language just as valid as any other that deserves to be celebrated in classrooms. Still, Pidgin advocates - many of them linguistics scholars - say the state by and large turns a blind eye to the language, ultimately leaving Pidgin-speaking students in the dark. Though experts say it’s difficult to deduce how many people speak Pidgin, world language catalogue Ethnologue estimates that nearly half of the state’s population speaks Pidgin. Da efficiency in expression.”īut there are still those who spurn Pidgin use in formal settings, saying students who are allowed or encouraged to speak it at school are put at a disadvantage when pursuing a college degree or career. “Not in da high maka-maka kind sense, but in da scientific or mathematical sense. “As you look over dese resources, I like fo yo to tink about Pidgin as one elegant language,” the letter, written by a UH College of Education professor, continues. The packet outlines how the materials, which were published in 2010, can help teachers meet state Department of Education standards. The fact that the resource even exists reflects the growing notion that Pidgin is a distinct and valid language that Hawaii schools should welcome. The materials - Pidgin grammar quizzes, critical reading exercises and the like - are meant to be used by Hawaii teachers who want to teach the language in their middle and high school classrooms. So begins the preface to a packet of Pidgin education materials put together by a linguistics professor and other University of Hawaii at Manoa faculty. “Wedda yo one native Pidgin speaka or one curious teacha of Pidgin speakaz, dis teacha’z guide, da website an all da adda stuff dat goes with it was put tugedda fo you.” Read Part 2: Can or No Can? Pidgin Speakers in the Workforce. My work with pidgins has led me to believe the opposite to be true in these cases: pidgins form through a trial-and-error process, where anything that is understood by the other party is sanctioned, this process is one of collaborative language creation (rather than one involving one group of teachers and one group of learners), and much of what finds its way in the resultant contact language do so independently of what the creators spoke prior to their encounter.Īs for theoretical implications, pidgins may shed light on which features in traditional languages are necessary for communication, and which are superfluous from the point of view of pure information transmission.Editor’s Note: This is the first of a two-part series about whether there’s a place for Pidgin in Hawaii schools. Some frequently occurring ones is that pidginization is a case of second language acquisition, that power and prestige are important factors, and that most structures are derived from the input languages. As a result, many generalizations have been based on extremely limited amounts of data or even on intuition. Pidgins are severely understudied, and while they are often mentioned as precursors to creoles, few linguists have shown a serious interest in them. become mother tongues to their speakers (when they may be re-labelled “creoles”). In some rare cases, however, they expand (both socially and structurally), and may even nativize, i. The process is relatively uncommon, and the life span of pidgins is usually short – most disappear when the contact situation changes, or when another medium of intergroup communication becomes available. They are typically less elaborate than any of the languages involved in their formation, and in comparison to those, reduction characterizes all linguistic levels. Pidgin languages sometimes form in contact situations where a means of communication is urgently needed between groups lacking a common code.
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