Palaka and Pidgin
A few weeks back, the new permanent exhibit “Pidgin: How was.. how stay” opened at Plantation Village Museum in Waipahu. I confirmed that a home-study course consisting of several hours of Rap Reiplinger (despite the organizers’ acknowledgment that local humorists had helped spread respect for Pidgin) did not make me even a beginning-level speaker. One look at the “Pidgin 100 Test” and I humbly walked my mainland legs back to get more lumpia. Had no clue where to start with questions like “wat da difference between ‘kapalu’ and ‘hamajang’ and ‘kapakahi’…” or “in da sentence ‘… da keiki mai popo stay opa around, as her ratoon crop dat…’, wat da keiki going be to me?” At some point, I’ll pick myself up a copy of Da Kine Dictionary, with community-generated entries so it didn’t only reflect the local usages of one compiler.
I also got introduced to palaka through several asides about Arakawa’s and the executive director’s “Got Palaka” shirt.
The pattern made it’s way in the late 1900′s when Americans ordered tons of checkered-patterned thick cloth from England to make the uniforms for the field workers. Originally a pattern type in England for the sailors, it was seen as plain and therefore cheap. The cloth of Nelson’s navy and Yankeedom’s clipper wasn’t known by any name until the Hawaiians and Issei (first generation Japanese immigrants) named it after the Hawaiian work for ‘frock’ which was also a mistranslation for “checkered.”
One of the many awesome things about Hawaii is how audio and visual markers of working class/plantation culture are celebrated. Especially awesome after spending so many years in Korea, where most everyone seems to be chasing after “yangban” status or at least the modern-day equivalent with brandname baubles. I need to do some reading on local labor history I think.
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