Pidgin and English in Hawai‘i

doi:10.1017/9781009748148.020

16 - Pidgin and English in Hawai‘i

from PART III - The Pacific

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 April 2026

James Grama ,

Michelle Kamigaki-Baron and

Katie Drager

General editor

Raymond Hickey

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Raymond Hickey: Affiliation:
University of Limerick

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Summary

This chapter provides a description of two language varieties spoken in Hawai‘i: Pidgin, an English-based creole, known exonymically as Hawai‘i Creole, and Hawai‘i English, the regional variety of English spoken in Hawai‘i. While Pidgin and Hawai‘i English are treated here as separate entities, we also acknowledge the continuum between them. Our description of linguistic variation in both varieties is based on analysis of speech from informal interviews. We present findings from work that examines variation in linguistic forms, including postvocalic /r/, and we focus especially on variation among vowels. The acoustic analysis of over 8,000 tokens of monophthongs has allowed us to examine and discuss how the vowels of Hawai‘i English and Pidgin have changed over time.

Keywords

Pidgin Hawai‘iEnglish localculture languageideologies languagevariationandchange vowelrealizations

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Type: Chapter
Information: The New Cambridge History of the English Language
Africa, Asia, Australasia and the Pacific
, pp. 443 - 473

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009748148.020 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2026

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