So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[GHT]

That reminds me that I once got into a conversation with someone in Hawaii (we were attending a concert at the Bishop Museum). In response to something she said, I replied "Hawaiian Pidgin is actually a creole language" or something like that. To which she doubled-down by saying "It's not a language. It is bad English spoken by uneducated people." I was absolutely floored.

That bad English is such a cruel take. It made me think, most people know of Cockney rhyming slang, but it's origin is prison rhyming slang, the prisoners didn't want to be understood except by fellow prisoners.

Taking that example, and this is only my conjecture, a slave arriving in a foreign land, afraid and knowing that brutality awaits everywhere. Why wouldn't they do what the prisoners did in Victorian England? Strikes me as a most sensible way of avoiding the slave master's whip.

 

[Tiki Tom]

GHT makes a good point and, To a degree, locals in Hawaii (including local haoles) do indeed speak pidgin to differentiate themselves from tourists and mainlanders. I’ve seen at least one guidebook give the advice that “whatever you do, don’t attempt to speak pidgin if you didn’t grow up with it.”

 

[Trenchfriend]

By way of variation, a good thing!:

Yesterday, I bought a shopping trolley at department store and I should have done that much earlier! Now, I can buy a useful stock of the heavy weighted sugar-packets. Or for example, four or more (heavy) glasses of Bismarck-herring/rollmops! And so on.

Life's good...

I bought a smaller model, aluminium and kind of a middle-class model. Empty, it weighs just 2,4 kilograms including the bag. It got the smaller 15 cm-wheels, instead of the monstrous 25 cm-wheels. There's even a seperate ** thermo pocket inside, but that's more a well-meant joke, because you can either put some small frozen stuff in or one pizza-packet. But no problem for me. When I buy my pizzas, I don't need the trolley.

 

[Harp]

That reminds me that I once got into a conversation with someone in Hawaii (we were attending a concert at the Bishop Museum). In response to something she said, I replied "Hawaiian Pidgin is actually a creole language" or something like that. To which she doubled-down by saying "It's not a language. It is bad English spoken by uneducated people." I was absolutely floored.

Creole it isn't; having spent time while in the Army in Louisiana and Hawaii, but a lingua franca derived from Hawaiian, English, some Spanish, Portuguese, Italian swirled with American GI barracks lingo thrown down upon the sand.
"Mo bettah Wahinies Kaneohe, bro." On further thought, Pidgin probably does have some Creole mixed in its mortar.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
If it’s now a “mother tongue” (I’m not familiar with it, so I couldn’t say with any authority if it is or isn’t), it would a creole language, lower case “c.”

 

[Tiki Tom]

From this Atlantic article: “Pidgin, according to linguists, is a creole language that reflects Hawaii’s ongoing legacy as a cultural melting pot.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/11/hawaiian-pidgin-recognized/416883/

I'm no linguist. All I know is that when my wife speaks Pidgin (she was born and raised there) we get discounts at the food truck!

 

[Trenchfriend]

You know these pseudo-intellectual, wannabe upper-class folks, which immediately start to telephone, when they entered the railcar?

They got all day and all the time in the world to telephone on their way, but they do it exactly in the short time, when they travel in our railcar for the maximum 45 minutes. But it's not really annoying to me, more kind of funny evertime to hear their put-on upscale talking about their veeeery important issues, in that "special" quielty tone, but good hearable for the other passengers.

Must be stressful with all these bourgie business-problems.

 

[Harp]

I always considered Pidge anachronistic, a derivative indigenous tongue fallen into disrepair even among the beach
surfer set; though lingering around Waikiki and Kaneohe and Oahu's then inner environs, more cast off flotsam than mother tongue but as a Chicago southsider I really should know better.

 

[Hercule]

You know these pseudo-intellectual, wannabe upper-class folks, which immediately start to telephone, when they entered the railcar?

They got all day and all the time in the world to telephone on their way, but they do it exactly in the short time, when they travel in our railcar for the maximum 45 minutes. But it's not really annoying to me, more kind of funny evertime to hear their put-on upscale talking about their veeeery important issues, in that "special" quielty tone, but good hearable for the other passengers.

Must be stressful with all these bourgie business-problems.

I agree it is most annoying when people talk in such a manner as to intend their conversations to be overheard.

 

[Harp]

From this Atlantic article: “Pidgin, according to linguists, is a creole language that reflects Hawaii’s ongoing legacy as a cultural melting pot.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/11/hawaiian-pidgin-recognized/416883/

I'm no linguist. All I know is that when my wife speaks Pidgin (she was born and raised there) we get discounts at the food truck!

I zeroxed this to my printer account and will read it. I stand corrected and embarrassed even-German was my
college baccalaureate core requirement foreign language and I recall protesting that Gaelic, my ancestral tongue
was relegated to the linguistic ash heap.

 

[Harp]

From this Atlantic article: “Pidgin, according to linguists, is a creole language that reflects Hawaii’s ongoing legacy as a cultural melting pot.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/11/hawaiian-pidgin-recognized/416883/

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/11/hawaiian-pidgin-recognized/416883/

Pidge isn't Creole. Hawaiian Pidgin Recognized acknowledges federal nod and tosses light campus
grammar gossip as a chaser toward this ethnic talisman tongue, but a lame (and typical Atlantic) hack lacking
hard currency though chock full with academe political correctness. My time on Oahu gave intro to Pidge,
liked the lingo, it was surf and turf but had its limits. I frankly cannot see recognition or scholastic integration
due to the ubiquity of English and the deep bow Pidge made to Hawaii's reigning de facto mother tongue.

 

[GHT]

I zeroxed this to my printer account and will read it. I stand corrected and embarrassed even-German was my
college baccalaureate core requirement foreign language and I recall protesting that Gaelic, my ancestral tongue
was relegated to the linguistic ash heap.

If by Gaelic you mean the Gaelic spoken throughout The British Isles, it is alive and well. On a couple of different TV programs, there was separate incidents of this. A fellow in Scotland, who was a track maintenance engineer, was walking the railway line, explaining his job and went on to say that he didn't learn English until he was twelve years old. Scottish Gaelic is still spoken although it's mainly in rural areas. But as a nation they are fiercely proud of their language and heritage.

The second progam was of a similar vein, two middle aged ladies knitting and talking in Welsh, one lady said that to get on it was essential to learn English, but her mother tongue will always be Welsh. She went on to say that she thought in Welsh, dreamed in Welsh and of course, sung in Welsh.

 

[belfastboy]

If by Gaelic you mean the Gaelic spoken throughout The British Isles, it is alive and well. On a couple of different TV programs, there was separate incidents of this. A fellow in Scotland, who was a track maintenance engineer, was walking the railway line, explaining his job and went on to say that he didn't learn English until he was twelve years old. Scottish Gaelic is still spoken although it's mainly in rural areas. But as a nation they are fiercely proud of their language and heritage.

The second progam was of a similar vein, two middle aged ladies knitting and talking in Welsh, one lady said that to get on it was essential to learn English, but her mother tongue will always be Welsh. She went on to say that she thought in Welsh, dreamed in Welsh and of course, sung in Welsh.

We have recently returned from 6 weeks in Scotland and encountered numerous instances of folks speaking Gaelic to each other, in shops and on the street. In Oban a group of young teen girls were walking down the street speaking it to each other on their way home from school. The language certainly appeared to be alive and well.

 

[Harp]

If by Gaelic you mean the Gaelic spoken throughout The British Isles, it is alive and well.

Yes, of course, a native indigenous tongue. However, Gaelic is a more scarce, specialized American university
language curriculum; so although Serbo-Croatian and Swahili were offered at my alma mater, advanced Gaelic and its
literature were not, fallen out of favor and all that....

 

[MisterCairo]

If youse guys think modern teen slang is bad, then, my fran', neck up, pliz, on gator lingo of the '30s, yowzah!

I may be turned on by this...

 

[MisterCairo]

What can you do?

An uneducated person insists others are uneducated. I don’t know how to reach such people, but I’m pretty sure I know how not to reach them. The need to feel superior is, in most cases, a response to a sense of personal inferiority, so telling them they’re wrong usually just causes them to dig in their heels.

It’s reminiscent of the “social drinker” who insists alcohol isn’t a drug.

It is my drug of choice...

 

[tonyb]

It is my drug of choice...

You’ll never want for company.

 

[vitanola]

Pidge isn't Creole. Hawaiian Pidgin Recognized acknowledges federal nod and tosses light campus
grammar gossip as a chaser toward this ethnic talisman tongue, but a lame (and typical Atlantic) hack lacking
hard currency though chock full with academe political correctness. My time on Oahu gave intro to Pidge,
liked the lingo, it was surf and turf but had its limits. I frankly cannot see recognition or scholastic integration
due to the ubiquity of English and the deep bow Pidge made to Hawaii's reigning de facto mother tongue.

The reference is to Hawaiian Pidgin as “A CREOLE” not as “CREOLE”. Linguistically speaking, a pidgin (note the lower case “p”) is a l sort of business language, a means of communication between intermixed populations which do not share a common language. It is a language which is used out in the world, but no one is a native speaker. A pidgin is considered to have become a creole (note here the lower case “c”) when it is spoken in the home, as a native tongue. Under this definition, Hawaiian Pidgin can properly be considered “a creole”, though it is most emphatically not “Creole”.

 

[GHT]

Yes, of course, a native indigenous tongue. However, Gaelic is a more scarce, specialized American university
language curriculum; so although Serbo-Croatian and Swahili were offered at my alma mater, advanced Gaelic and its
literature were not, fallen out of favor and all that....

I see, I didn't realise that you were referring to a curriculum. When you are an English speaking country, choosing another language can be a minefield but wouldn't it be an eye opener if some of the Polynesian interpretations of English were offered?

 

[GHT]

Have you ever been in that situation where you are tightening the purse strings, or trying to, and the unexpected hits you, one after another? On Friday the outside window of a double glazed skylight unit cracked all the way across, that's not going to be cheap. And only last week the garage told me to be ready for a new clutch in the car, then this afternoon the ceramic hob that we cook on, cracked in two places, and it's only five years old. I tell you, sometimes I despair, I think just what else will happen?