Much Pilikia, Many Huhu

In a blacksmithing class, the teacher watched one Hawaiian boy vigorously whaling away at cold metal. Then he asked: "Why don't you heat it, Joe?" Replied exhausted, exasperated Joe: "Heet it? I heet it so hard, I bust my arm."

For two generations, Hawaii's teachers have struggled to make their students learn English, and haven't succeeded yet. Most of Hawaii's polyglot population--Hawaiians, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Koreans, Puerto Ricans--prefer pidgin English, the nearest thing to a common language in the Islands.

In easygoing pidgin, one word does the work of 20, a shrug or grimace the work of ten. It ranges from the simple ("I no like that") to the colorfully complex ("You stay go, I stay come," meaning "You go ahead, I'll join you later"). When Hawaiian idiom is mixed with pidgin grammar, the result takes an expert to fathom. Sample: "He no got wahine. She too much pilikia. Make him huhu." ("He has no girl any more. She was too much trouble. She made him mad.")

Last week, after a six months' survey of Hawaii's language problem, a visitor from the mainland, Wabash College's Professor W. Norwood Brigance, warned the territory of the penalties of pidgin. Said he: "If the standard speech [continues to be] pidgin English, Hawaii will never fully become a cultural part of the U.S. Politically it may become the 49th state, but its people . . . will be held in contempt. . . ."

Professor Brigance, who once taught at the University of Hawaii, urged the university to set up stiff English-language entrance exams, and make English-language courses compulsory. Pidgin is still spoken even on the campus; students are afraid they will be shunned back home as stuck-ups if they talk anything else.

There have been many attempts to take the pidgin out of Hawaiian English. Under pressure from haole (white) parents, the legislature set up separate English-language schools, but Professor Brigance, along with many Hawaiians, regards these as undemocratic and divisive. During the war, the Army shut down Japanese and Chinese language schools, but last month in federal court they won the right to start up again. In many homes, where parents speak no English and children no Japanese, pidgin is the only family tongue. One pidgin phrase is known as far as Italy. It is the motto of the famed Japanese-American 442nd Infantry Combat Team in World War II: "Go for broke" ("Give it everything you've got").

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