You’ll hear it before you know what it is. A cashier at a plate lunch spot says “howzit” and then “fo’ hea’ o’ to go?” and the mainland part of your brain lags for a second while it tries to parse the words. Then you realize the cashier is waiting, so you answer, and the moment passes.

That’s Hawaii Pidgin. It isn’t broken English, it isn’t slang, and nobody is speaking it incorrectly. Linguists call it Hawaiʻi Creole English (HCE), and it’s been a stable, fully grammatical language on these islands for roughly 140 years (Bilinguistics overview of Hawaiian Pidgin’s plantation-era origins). The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Department of Second Language Studies runs a dedicated research center for it, the Charlene Sato Center for Pidgin, Creole, and Dialect Studies. In 2015 the U.S. Census Bureau added “Hawaiian Pidgin” to its list of recognized languages spoken at home (Hawaii News Now coverage, 2015).

What this means for a visitor is simple. Pidgin is background music on your trip. You’ll hear it at the farmers market, at the shave ice window, at the car rental return. You don’t need to speak it. You do need to know how to listen to it, and what to do when it’s pointed at you.

In the late 1800s, sugar and pineapple plantations across Hawaiʻi brought in contract laborers from China, Japan, Portugal, and the Philippines, among other countries. These workers lived side by side with Native Hawaiians and with a smaller group of English-speaking plantation owners and missionary descendants. No single language connected them. What evolved in the fields and camps, over roughly two generations, was first a plantation pidgin (a simplified contact language) and then a full creole with its own grammar, phonology, and vocabulary once children began growing up speaking it as their first language. That second-generation shift is the line linguists draw between “pidgin” and “creole.” What Hawaiʻi calls Pidgin today is technically the creole stage. It borrowed from all of those source languages, which is why you’ll hear Hawaiian, Japanese, and Portuguese words folded into sentences that otherwise follow an English-adjacent structure. For more on that plantation-era history, see our guide to Hawaiʻi’s plantation heritage towns, and for the linguistic treatment see Kent Sakoda and Jeff Siegel’s Pidgin Grammar: An Introduction to the Creole Language of Hawaii (Bess Press, 2003).

Not an exhaustive list. These are the ones a first-time visitor is most likely to hear in the first 48 hours, with the meanings most visitors get wrong.

Howzit. “How’s it going.” Used like “hi.” Not a question that needs an answer. A simple “hey” or “hi” back works fine (more on why in the etiquette section below).

Shoots. “Okay, sounds good.” Used to close a small exchange. Cashier hands you change and says “shoots.” The transaction is done.

Rajah / rajah dat. “Roger that.” Confirmation. “Pick you up at ten?” “Rajah.”

Da kine. The single most Pidgin word in Pidgin. Literally “the kind,” functionally a universal placeholder like “whatchamacallit” or “you know the thing we both understand without naming.” A sentence can be almost entirely “da kine” and still make sense to two speakers who share context. Visitors who try to drop it into a sentence almost always use it wrong, because the point is shared context, and you don’t have it.

Grinds / grindz. Food. Specifically good, hearty food. “Choke grindz” means a lot of great food.

Broke da mout. Literally “broke the mouth.” The food was so good it broke your mouth. The highest compliment you can give a plate lunch. You’ll see it on T-shirts and on Broke Da Mouth Grindz, the Kailua-Kona restaurant on the Big Island that took the phrase as its name.

Bus up / bus’ up. Wrecked, busted, taken apart. Short for “busted up.” A wave can bus you up (“dat set wen bus me up”), your slippahs can be all bus up after a year of beach days, and a tough hike can leave you bus up the next morning. Used affectionately for hard days, hard waves, and well-loved gear alike.

Choke. A lot. Many. “Choke people at da beach today.” Nothing to do with throats.

Talk story. Have a conversation. Usually unhurried, usually with no agenda. This one is worth a whole section. See below.

Pau. Done. Finished. “You pau?” = are you done. “Pau hana” = “done with work,” the Friday-afternoon version of “happy hour.” You’ll see it on bar menus across all four main islands.

Slippahs / rubbah slippahs. Flip-flops. The default footwear of the state. Nothing to do with indoor slippers.

Stink eye. A disapproving look. You earn stink eye by being loud in a quiet neighborhood, parking badly at the beach, or being performatively touristy. It’s the gentlest form of social correction in Hawaiʻi, and paying attention to it will save you a lot of awkward moments.

No can. “Can’t.” Flat and final. “No can park heah.”

Li’dat / li’ dis. “Like that” / “like this.” Used as a tag at the end of a sentence. “Cut ‘em up li’ dat.”

Small kine. “A little bit.” Shortens to “small kine tired,” “small kine spicy.”

Plenny. “Plenty.” Means “a lot.” Interchangeable with “choke” in most cases.

Ono. Delicious. Also the name of a fish (wahoo), which is in turn delicious. Context sorts it out.

Kine. “Kind.” Often used as a softener mid-sentence. “It was kine expensive.” Also the root of “da kine.”

Shaka. Not a word but a hand gesture. Thumb and pinky extended, three middle fingers curled. Means “all good,” “thanks,” “aloha.” You’ll see it from passing drivers, from people in the water who waved you into a wave, from cashiers. Return it freely.

Braddah / bruddah, sistah, uncle, auntie. Terms of address for people in a friendly or respectful register. “Uncle” and “auntie” are specifically used for older adults regardless of actual family relation, and they carry genuine respect. Using them for an actual stranger is fine and often welcomed.

If you take one Pidgin phrase home, make it this one. “Talk story” means to have a leisurely, unhurried conversation, often with someone you just met, often with no purpose beyond the conversation itself. It’s the opposite of the efficient American transactional chat. There’s no agenda. The person behind you in line isn’t annoyed because they’re probably in the conversation too.

Talk story happens everywhere in Hawaiʻi: at the farmers market while the vendor bags your apple bananas, at the shave ice counter while the shop owner tells you why their recipe is the way it is, at the beach park when the uncle in the folding chair asks where you’re from. If you have the time and the inclination, let it happen. Don’t rush through, and don’t pull out your phone. The conversation is the thing, not an obstacle to the thing.

This is also the connective tissue between Pidgin and the broader Hawaiian cultural value of aloha, a generosity of time and attention toward the person in front of you. Visitors who figure out talk story have better trips. It’s as simple as that.

This is the part of the post that matters most, and it’s also the part visitors most often get wrong.

Don’t try to speak Pidgin. Not after one day, not after one week, not after one full vacation. If you grew up somewhere else, your attempt will sound performative, it will land poorly, and the person you’re trying to impress will either politely pretend they didn’t hear it or give you stink eye. Pidgin is a marker of local identity, specifically of having grown up local, and it’s not something you can put on and take off because you liked your Kauaʻi trip.

This applies even to short phrases. “Howzit, bruddah” from a visitor lands wrong in a way that’s hard to describe but easy to feel. Say “hey” or “aloha” or “how are you.” Those work.

Do listen to it. Understanding Pidgin when it’s spoken around you is the entire goal. It means you can follow what the guy at the surfboard rental is telling you about the break, what the auntie at the farmers market means when she says “da mango stay pau,” what your Uber driver is joking about with a friend on the phone.

One exception. Certain words are loanwords that non-locals use all the time without causing friction: “aloha,” “mahalo,” “ohana,” “pau hana” as a happy-hour label, “shaka” as a gesture. Those are part of general Hawaiʻi vocabulary, not specifically Pidgin identity markers. Use them naturally, don’t pile them on. For the Hawaiian-language side of that vocabulary, see our Hawaiian words to know guide and the Hawaiian alphabet primer.

The underlying point: Pidgin rewards the visitor who listens carefully and punishes the visitor who tries to join in. You’ll get 90 percent of the cultural benefit by being on the receiving end of it, respectfully.

A few resources if Pidgin catches your ear and you want to learn more after your trip.

“Pidgin to Da Max” by Douglas Simonson, first published in December 1981 (Wikipedia entry). Illustrated glossary, funny and affectionate. Sold at Native Books / Nā Mea Hawaiʻi in Honolulu and widely available online via an Amazon title search.

“Pidgin Grammar: An Introduction to the Creole Language of Hawaii” by Kent Sakoda and Jeff Siegel (Bess Press, 2003). If you want the serious linguistic treatment with verb tenses, pronoun systems, and phonology diagrams, this is the book. Both authors are UH Mānoa linguists (Bess Press listing).

Lee Tonouchi. A Honolulu writer who styles himself “Da Pidgin Guerrilla” and has built a career writing entirely in Pidgin. His books and essays, particularly Da Word (Bamboo Ridge Press, 2001), are the easiest way to see Pidgin on the page as literature rather than transcription (Bamboo Ridge Press).

Da Jesus Book. The New Testament translated into Hawaiʻi Pidgin over 12 years by retired Cornell linguistics professor Joseph Grimes and 26 Pidgin speakers, published by Wycliffe in 2000 (Wikipedia overview of Hawaiian Bible translations). Whatever your feelings about the source material, it’s a remarkable linguistic artifact: a full religious text in a language with no standardized spelling. More on the project from Wycliffe Bible Translators.

Local talk radio and podcasts. KTUH, the UH Mānoa student station, and Honolulu’s Japanese-language KZOO run local programming where Pidgin slips in naturally. Hawaiʻi Public Radio’s The Conversation regularly features guests who speak Pidgin on air, and the show archive is free to stream.

Hawaii Pidgin is a real language with a real history, and it’s everywhere on these islands without being aimed at you. Learn enough to understand what’s being said around you. Appreciate it as a layer of culture that makes the place what it is. Let the cashier tell you “shoots” and take your plate lunch.

Don’t try to speak it. Don’t put it on a T-shirt when you get home. Listen and laugh at the jokes. It’s one more piece of evidence that Hawaiʻi is its own place, not a generic American beach destination with palm trees.