Pidgin to da Max by Douglas Simonson

by Douglas Simonson

Pidgin To Da Max Hana Hou has all new words and cartoons. And now in a newly designed and bigger size, da bestest! by Ken Sakata, Douglas Simonson “If you've been around the islands for a while you must have run into Peppo’s Pidgin to Da Max 1981, its sequel Peppo’s Pidgin to Da Max Hana Hou 1992, and the companion volume Hawaii to Da Max 1992. The news is good. All three books are back in print or still in print? whatevahs yeah! Pidgin to Da Max is a kind of pidgin dictionary with words ranging from act, as in no act, meaning don’t show off or be cool, all the way to zoris, defined here as sleepahs. Douglas Simonson, aka Peppo, has illustrated the whole book with great and very funny cartoons.” ―Maui Weekly “Now? if you really want to have some fun with pidgin these are two great books... the book is in a cartoon format and presents commonly used pidgin words in dictionary order there’s really no other way to do it... While reading these books you’ll be quite amazed at the versatility of pidgin even if you can’t quite understand it yet!”

Genres: Humor, Nonfiction, Linguistics, Language, Comedy, Reference

Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

Reviews

[Lizzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

made me a little sad how some of these words aren't really used too much anymore 🥺 iconic book tho

[Kealii Ballao · Rating 4 out of 5]

Confirmed my own suspicions of my language.

[Bob Elwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun beach read. Learned a lot of new phrases in an entertaining way. From an outsider's perspective, some parts seemed a little racist.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

This won't help you learn to speak Hawaiian Pidgin English, but it will amuse you and help you understand some of the unique and colorful vocabulary. More of a novelty book than useful travel or language learning tool. But I can definitely see it useful for actors or writers seeking to learn the accent and vernacular, although heavy dialect like this is currently frowned on in writing circles. It does give you spelling samples of the sounds and sentence rhythms.

[MaryAnne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book when I lived in Hawaii and never read it! After 11 years in Hawaii and 23 years back on the mainland I recognized a lot of the pidgin I heard and sometimes used while there. Biggest negative of the book is the often use of pidgin in the definition of a pidgin word.

[Chad CG · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was fun to read for different.

[Kasey Fernandez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Accurate but would be better if the author co-authored with kanaka maoli.

[Feasibly · Rating 5 out of 5]

GOOD FUN

[Jbussen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this like "small kid time" and I borrowed it again just for nostalgia. Today, after a quarter of a century, sadly, a lot of this is just gone. That Hawaii is dead. We have been "haolefied". Enough of it is still relevant enough so that when a visitor comes in, this will be a fun read.

[Nathaniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I took my first trip to Hawaii in April 2017. While reading through tourist magazines, I learned of the existence of Hawaiian pidgin, a creole of languages developed by the different ethnicities that came to work on the 20th century sugar plantations, and I was intrigued. One of those magazines also recommended this book. I spent the rest of the trip trying to find a bookstore on Kaua'i so that I could buy it. I finally found a big stack of them at the Talk Story bookstore in Hanpepe on our last day. Score! (Also, visit that bookstore if you're on Kaua'i. It's really cool.)

I felt this book was a mixed bag when I actually read it, however. Rather than giving you an overview of the language as a whole, it shows the urban Honolulu dialect circa 1985, and it's clearly written for locals as an inside joke rather than for haoles like me wanting to learn about the language. It's also very much written with a high school-age audience in mind; it's very focused on sexuality and incorporates casually racist slang (especially toward Japanese) in a way that may offend people who are more mature, or, well, who are Japanese. However, this also shows at the baseline how Hawaiian culture reacts to other nationalities in Hawaii, without any politically correct papering over, which is a useful tool to understand such a diverse culture. (Another, tamer version of this could be seen in the 1970's song "Mr. Sun Cho Lee", which is on Youtube.)

That said, the cartoons are fun, and the authors especially do a good job of making fun of Hawaiian culture's over the top fear of Samoans. However, if you want to learn about the pidgin language and local Hawaiian culture in a way that is more mature and aimed at a general audience, I'd recommend checking out Hawaiian former stand-up comedian Andy Bumatai's Youtube channel - he hosted something called The Daily Pidgin Show for about a year between late 2015 and mid-2016, in which he explained a lot of the language and culture of Hawaii. That's a better resource overall instead of, or in addition to, this book.

[Angela Benedetti · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess I was looking for something more on the reference side and less on the humor side. If you just want a book to page through and get some laughs, you'll probably love this. If you want to learn something, not so much. There are running jokes, like the Samoan stuff you never want to say to Samoans 'cause they'll beat you up, haha, but you never find out what they MEAN, which makes the joke on the reader. Yay?

I can see someone who speaks Hawaiian Pidgin loving this, reading through it going, "Yeah, that's totally us!" and getting all the in jokes and such. For an outsider, though, it's not really what I was looking for.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first book in the comic-book-style series on Hawaiian pidgin. There's a second book, Pidgin to da Max Hana Hou! which is more of the same.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned a lot of slang Hawaiian words. "Wow, da cah was goeen so fas', da buggah wen huli(Hoo lee)!" and that is how they would spell it out.

[Marla · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took this to college with me, so I could educate my midwestern (haole) college mates about Hawaii's pidgin english.

[Larry Dunlap · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mainly bought this for reference for my own work. Was really meant to be funny rather than serious help with pidgin.

[Briana Grenert · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those books I wish I had with me at school to make me laugh and feel less homesick :)