Kimberly Shigeoka had a great editorial on Pidgin English in Hawaii.
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?0d71a7a6-e014-4e49-9b60-2cb0a1635dc5
My teacher decided to tell the class, in Pidgin, that “You won’t be able to do anything if you speak Pidgin.” He spoke of his own Pidgin speaking friends, who now lead dead-end lives. As he continued to reinforce this statement, I started to become angry. My teacher was off-handedly offending not only myself, but my family as well.
Yes, I am a Pidgin speaker. Not only that, my parents speak Pidgin and my grandparents are full-time Pidgin speakers. I felt helpless and angry as my teacher told us that Pidgin speakers could not become someone. I felt like jumping up and saying that “my grandparents are someone and they speak Pidgin! They are two of the most financially-sound, hard-working people I know.”
Sadly, experiences like my own are common. Many students have been told that it is disgraceful to speak Pidgin. This degradation of Pidgin bashes the self-esteem of many local students, who feel a sense of worthlessness and shame.
1) That teacher should be fired for cultural disrespect and innaccuracy.
I know doctors who can speak Pidgin English and Standard English.
There are plenty of students at the University of Hawaii who can speak Pidgin English to their friends and family, and speak Standard English with professors and classmates from the mainland.
However, the anti-pidgin fanatics will ignore those facts. Facts don't matter to anti-pidgin fanatics.
To solve this issue, we need to show students the difference between Pidgin grammar and English grammar. We teach students who learn English as a second language that their first language is nothing to be ashamed of. That it needs to be kept distinct from English and both languages need to be practiced and studied to stay proficient.
A large problem here in the islands is that students grow up ashamed of themselves and their families. Is this really what we want to be teaching the next generation? That they can never become someone because of their heritage?
Thank you Kimberley Shigeoka
Now, I want to talk about this one Chinese male from my high school. (my fellow McKinley Tigers might know who I'm talking about)
This Chinese male ALWAYS speak Standard English. People tell him "you talk like a haole".
Yet, that same Chinese male struggled in school. He still couldn't calculate percentages in the 12th grade. He flunked plenty of classes in high school and dropped out of community college.
So dont give me this crap that "pidgin is for the uneducated."
What makes it even worse, is that same Chinese male blamed the prevalence of pidgin in Hawaii for his academic struggle. WHAT AN IDIOT! He can't even speak pidign, so why is he complaining.
I know many students at the University of Hawaii who are from rural Oahu and the Neighbor Islands, where the pidgin is a MILLION TIMES STRONGER than the pidgin of urban Honolulu. And those students are academically smarter than that Chinese pidgin-hater!
Then that same bozo complained that making it in Hawaii is overwhelming because (in his words) "you gotta know Standard English, you gotta know Pidign, you gotta know Japanese words, you gotta know Hawaiian words"
I told that bozo that in the mainland, you gotta know Standard English, the local dialect (ie, the Southern dialect, Fargo dialect, NY dialect), Ebonics (African American English) and Spanish.
So dont give me this crap about Hawaii being "overwhelming"
The real reason for that pitiful man's struggle has nothing to do with pidgin.He doesn't take responsibility. Everything is someone else's fault. He's what you call a "victim boy".
That Chinese male is the same I mentioned in the blog. He's the same fool who said "it's not fair that street names in Hawaii are in Hawaiian." He's the same one who is racist towards Polynesians.
