Hawai‘i Creole: phonology

Hawai‘i Creole is spoken by an estimated 600,000 people in the US state of Hawai‘i. In the linguistics literature, it is usually called Hawai‘i (or Hawaiian) Creole English, but its speakers call it “Pidgin”. While Hawai‘i Creole uses many words from Hawaiian and other languages, the majority of its vocabulary comes from English; however, the phonology and semantics are quite different from English. Before describing the phonology of Hawai‘i Creole, we will present some background information on its historical development, current use, and vocabulary.