Through the powers of clairvoyance-“da kine” is said to derive from “the kind,” a common Pidgin catchall for “whatchamacallit”-I mostly understood what he was asking for. “Try pass the da kine,” he’d say, gesturing toward a pile of tools. I’d savor that verbal pat on the back for hours. He’d stretch both ends of the word to sound closer to “chair-ray” and employ it when something looked impeccable. “Cherry,” he’d drawl, the few times I managed to do something right. Here, leading a team of laborers from as far as Micronesia and as near as Waipahu, he gave directives, criticisms, and the occasional compliment in the staccato inflection of Hawaiian Pidgin. Down in the scorching pit of a concrete hole, I saw a different side of my father, whose mode of communicating tended to err on the side of silence. I didn’t know how to tile a pool, a skill my father had perfected decades ago, during summers helping his own father run the family pool company. What did he expect? I was a broke Syracuse University student, back home in Honolulu for the summer and working with my dad to fund an expensive semester abroad in London. He was referring to my tile work, which, to be fair, was all hamajang: messed up, crooked, disorderly. But nothing reflects Hawaii’s confluence of cultures, its medley of immigrants, quite like my father’s voice barking, “Eh! Das all hamajang!” Or the soothing trance of waves tickling the shore of Ala Moana Beach Park at dusk while my siblings and I waited for Fourth of July fireworks. Sure, there’s the voice of the beloved Israel Kamakawiwo‘ole, singing coolly over his ukulele about the white sandy beaches and the “colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky.” Or the rhythmic cadences of the ipu, a percussive gourd that soundtracked the hula lessons I attended at the local Y as a child. I don’t know if there’s a sound that captures what it means to be from Hawaii quite like Hawaiian Pidgin English. I was raised on Hawaiian Pidgin English, a melting pot of a language that reflects the islands’ history, but it took me years to fully appreciate its importance, not just to local culture but my own identity.
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