Hawai'i Creole

Hawai'i Creole is spoken by an estimated 600,000 people in the US state of Hawaii, where it is usually called "Pidgin". The majority of its vocabulary comes from English, but it also uses many words from other languages. In terms of phonology, semantics and so me aspects of grammar, however, Hawai'i Creole differs markedly from English (see Sakoda and Siegel 2003, 2008a, 2008b). Hawaii Creole evolved in the early 20th century from a pidgin language that was a consequence of the plantation economy which had expanded rapidly from around 1877. Thousands of indentured labourers were imported to work on the plantations - first mainly from China, other Pacific Islands and Portugal, then from Japan, and later from Korea, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and some European countries. Other than from English, the major influences on the language have come from Portuguese and Cantonese in grammar and Hawaiian and Japanese in vocabulary.