A few months ago I was texting my niece, Jill Peterson, about what to bring for Thanksgiving. My last text to her was short: “Kden.” (“OK, then” for malihini readers.)
“Kden” is one of my favorite pidgin words, and I thought I’d invite the readers of my Rearview Mirror Insider newsletter to share what their favorite pidgin expressions were.
Modesty
Actor Nick Hormann was the first to respond. He grew up in Halawa housing.
“Oh man, you goin’ fo’ broke, Bob. Get plenny,” he said. “This is going to be fun.”
One of his favorites, he said, was, “In the 1950s my Aunt Irmgard Hormann, librarian in the young-adult section of the Library of Hawaii, had this question from a teenager: ‘You get books on modesty?’
She asked the boy to repeat the topic. “Modesty,” he said. She still didn’t get it.
“So, she asked him to write the word on a piece of paper. He wrote, ‘Mother’s Day.’”
Ainokea
I told my niece, Jill, about “modesty” at our family’s Thanksgiving dinner. She had a funny story, she told us, about another pidgin expression.
“Remember a few years ago, people had bumper stickers with ‘ainokea’ on them?” she asked. She was with some people and one asked what that meant. Jill is local and married to a retired Army officer.
“Ainokea? It’s a mountain,” another military spouse replied.
“We all laughed at this,” Jill said. Maybe they think “Neva Kea” is the mountain next to it, someone suggested.
I decided to look into “ainokea” and found it apparently was created in 1883. In a 1939 book called “How’s Your Hawaiian,” by George Armitage, he wrote:
“Charles Dickey, the well-known island architect, in 1883 took a two-week trip with a camping party through the vast crater of Haleakala in the Hawaii National Park area on Maui.
“Mr. Dickey built the first rest house at the 10,000-foot summit of Haleakala. The camping party called themselves the ‘Hui o Ainokea’ (the Company of I No Care!).”
The buggah no stay
Chris McKenzie told me, “In 1959, in my senior year at Punahou, I was in mandatory study hall in the school library (because of my not-so-stellar grades).
“Mrs. Bush was in charge. One of my fellow nonscholars was absent. Mrs. Bush asked me where he was, and I replied, without thinking, ‘The buggah no stay.’
“Very quickly, I was on my way to the principal’s office with a dreaded blue slip. My dad, who made it clear to me he did not see the humor in my failure to use the king’s English, mentioned the incident to Eddie Sherman, who related it in one of his columns in the Advertiser. He thought it was humorous.”
Go stay go
Sadako Tengan said, “My all-time favorite pidgin phrase is, ‘You go stay go. I see you bumbye.”
Another variation on this is, “You go stay go, I go stay come. I see you bumbye, eh.”
Pidgin English Hall of Fame
Journalist Don Chapman created a Pidgin English Hall of Fame in the 1980s. It was more focused on pidgin speakers, rather than the things they said, but here are some phrases he put in his column:
Jeanne Avarico of Liberty Mutual Insurance came up with a pidgin term for a standard piece of office equipment: puka-meka — a hole-puncher, of course.
What do you call a haole guy trying to learn pidgin? A training brah.
Here’s a nomination to the Pidgin English Hall of Fame for the City and County of Honolulu. Telephone callers to a city government number got a taped message that said, “Try check da numbah and call again.”
Code?
Armitage’s book told a story about an Oahu man who was on the mainland in the 1930s. He was called by a representative of a Hawaii company, who asked if he could speak Hawaiian.
They had received a cable from their Honolulu headquarters that ended with a number of unintelligible Hawaiian words. Perhaps it might be some sort of code, he said.
The man told him he didn’t speak Hawaiian, but he could look.
They met, and Armitage related that it was Hawaiian, but not code.
It read, “Mele Kalikimaka a me aloha makahiki hou.” Merry Christmas and happy new year.
Plural of mongoose?
Another cute story from the book is about the frequently asked question at the time in the islands: What is the plural of mongoose?
Mongooses? Mongeese?
Jim McInerny said a schoolboy on the Hamakua Coast of Hawaii island had a unique answer.
When a teacher asked him the plural of mongoose, he replied, “Plenny mongoose.”
It’s a funny story. But seriously, is there an answer? Actually, it’s “mongooses,” Armitage said.
The Good and Spesho Book
Douglas Kirkland told me he was part of a group to translate the Bible into pidgin. “The Central Oahu Church in Mililani put together a team of 30 people who took 10 years and translated the entire Bible, Old and New Testament, into pidgin so as to be able to preach the gospel to those who only speak pidgin. It was a massive undertaking!
“The translation is called ‘The Good and Spesho Book.’ It is available at Amazon.
“Get 29 local peopo dat talk pidgin from small-kid time dat translate um. Dey come from plenny diffren churches. From 1987 to 2020, some a dem work long time, an’ oddas work short time. But all togedda dey make dis book fo’ da peopo dat talk pidgin, fo’ erybody find out ’bout Jesus fo’ real kine.”
Pidgin autocorrect
Sue Atkins said, “I recently said the word ‘anything’ while talking into my phone with the talk-to-text program. It came out as ‘anyt’ing.’
“I had no idea da buggah spoke pidgin,” she exclaimed!
Melveen Leed
Former KGMB news anchor Linda Coble likes to joke that entertainer Melveen Leed taught her the first five words of pidgin she learned: “Nah nah nah nah nah.”
Da kine
Gere Best wrote, “The use of ‘da kine’ is very much on the decline. I’m sad to see that it’s not being used as frequently now. ‘Da kine’ spoke volumes and we ALL knew what was meant by its use, too.”
In 1985 the Honolulu Star- Bulletin asked readers to nominate their favorite pidgin expressions. The results? “Da kine” was “da bes’.”
Also receiving plenny votes were “You go stay come and I go stay go” and “Howzit?”
Da kine
Barbara Jerkins said, “I worked for three years with a gal whose favorite phrase was ‘da kine.’
“She would say things like, ‘So, me and da kine went to da kine, and we saw da kine there, and then we ate da kine, then we went to da kine and saw da kine movie.’
“At some point I came to know exactly what she was talking about. Every. Single. Time. How I miss those days!”
I heard Barbara Jerkins died this week. She contributed the above story and many others over the years. So, I dedicate this da kine column to her.
Kden. Pau fo’ now. Readers: Do you have a favorite pidgin expression?
Bob Sigall is the author of the five “Companies We Keep” books, full of amazing stories about Hawaii people, places and organizations. Send your comments and suggestions to Sigall@Yahoo.com.
