Chûgoku Dialect Terms that Remain in Hawaii Creole English

This paper will focus on Chûgoku-ben, or the Hiroshima/Yamaguchi dialect, the language brought to Hawaii and used by the majority of the Japanese immigrants during the plantation period and its attrition rates among the Japanese Americans in Hawaii. Under the hypothesis that speakers' age influences the rates of attrition of Chûgoku-ben, a linguistic survey was conducted, based on our social contacts with local Japanese Americans, to study how much of Chugoku-ben vocabulary has been retained in Hawaii today. We will first discuss the formation of Hawaiian Japanese, a common language spoken among the Japanese immigrants. Second, we will report a result of our survey on some Chûgoku-ben vocabulary. Based on our data collected from people of different generations (the second, third, and fourth generation Japanese immigrants) and ages (20 to 86), the attrition rates of the Chûgoku-ben terms are separated by the speakers' generation groups rather than their age groups. We will then introduce some of the terms that diffused into today's HCE (Hawaii Creole English) from Hawaiian Japanese. After that, possible reasons to account for the different attrition rates of the Hawaiian Japanese terms will be mentioned. Lastly, use of Japanese language in Hawaii today and the future of Hawaiian Japanese will be discussed. Our study will contribute to better understanding of Hawaii's unique sociolinguistic variations that were enhanced by the plantation immigrants, including a large group from Japan