Home on the Web

By Richard Borreca
Star-Bulletin

Friday, May 2, 1997

Pidgin takes flight
to sell and delight

Dere waz one ol Tutu
Stay living in one slippah
She get choke kids
Planny braddahs one sistah.

That's right, pidgin has come to the Web. Not just written dialectic, but spoken pidgin you can get by clicking on http://www.extreme-hawaii.com/pidgin.

It is a commercial site, so expect to be digging among the bed-and-breakfast and T-shirt ads, but the pages are great fun.

There are 28 words or phrases to listen to and three nursery rhymes in pidgin.

Putting something like this on the Web probably took a fair amount of courage as there are enough different types of pidgin to trigger a month of flame wars.

But then, as the Web page reminds: "If I come stay go, an you no stay come, wat foa I go?"

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"Home on the Web" is a weekly Friday feature of the Star-Bulletin.
Richard Borreca can be reached by e-mail at rborreca@pixi.com