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Title: classic description of a language community
Review: I bought the original when it came out. It's a classic description of a language community- it defines what the words mean, gives examples of use in context, shows who uses pidgin, and in what context. It celebrates the language. Academic sociolinguists would have a hard time creating a description this accurate. It's written more from an insider viewpoint. I'm so glad the new edition including Pidgin to da Max Hana Hou came out, because somebody swiped my original copy a long time ago. My aunt taught high school English to pidgin-speaking kids on Kuai before WWI. She came back to NYS speaking some pidgin- I don't know if her students learned to code-switch, but she did. Some of the words are the same, and some Old Plantation pidgin words she used have changed ( ex. she used "stateside," n. plus adj., for mainland.) For a haole non-pidgin-speaking linguist, it's fascinating.
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