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It
is a mistake to consider Pidgin "broken English".
If anything was "broken", it was Hawaiian, since
it is the Hawaiian language that
forms the structure of Pidgin, as well as providing many of
the colorful and descriptive words. It is also a mistake
to assume that anyone speaking Pidgin is uneducated.
Hawaii's Governor speaks Pidgin sometimes, as do most people
who grew up in the islands. It's more appropriate to
consider anyone speaking Pidgin as bilingual, for it is increasingly
recognized as a language in its own right, one with a very
rich and interesting history.
As
with other Creole languages, Hawaiian Pidgin originally developed
as a means for people who spoke different languages to learn
to communicate with each other in order to do business.
The first were European and American merchants who traded
iron tools, cloth and other items for supplies of fresh food
and water. Subsequently, contract workers were brought
to the islands from China, Japan, the Philippines and other
places, to work on the sugar plantations. Words
and phrases from each of these languages worked their way
into the language that all understood, the pidgin that has
evolved into Hawaii's unofficial language. (Note:
English and Hawaiian are each official languages.)
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