Pidgin: the Voice of Hawai'i

This film is a joyful celebration of the history and endurance of Hawaiian Pidgin that blends the traditional Hawaiian language with the English of the missionaries and plantation masters, along with a bit of Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Tagalog, and the all-purpose idiom, “da kine.” Despite occasional efforts to purge it from schools—it's long been considered a language of social inferiors and gangs, with the potential to lower school test scores and hamper job seekers—Pidgin (declared an official language by the U.S. Census Bureau) persists in the island state's multiethnic society. Pidgin has its champions such as writer and occasional rapper Lee Tonouchi, author of the seminal literary work Da Word, who stages his wedding in Pidgin (not an easy achievement), as well as a collective of enthusiasts known as Da Pidgin Coup, and a duo attempting to translate the Bible into Pidgin (the New Testament equals “Da Jesus Book”).