Ebook: Language and Dialect in Hawaii: A Sociolinguistic History to 1935

First published in 1969, more than thirty years after having been written, and regarded then as "one of the clearest and most readable treatises on the subject," Language and Dialect in Hawaii continues to be read and studied by scholars of sociology and linguistics in Hawaii. John E. Reinecke's study of the rise, function, and status of Hawaiian pidgin English up to 1935 and the competition of languages in Hawaii remains an authoritative treatment in the context of social history and of the evolution of makeshift languages and regional dialects. The book includes a full discussion of the origins and probable future of the creole dialects and languages of various ethnic groups brought together in the Hawaiian Islands during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The background of "pidgin" and other forms of non-standard English is dealt with in terms of the social conditions that resulted in their development.

Based largely on personal observations made during Reinecke's years of teaching and Honokaa School on the island of Hawaii and on interviews and correspondence with local people, Language and Dialect in Hawaii is a lasting contribution to the study of pidgin and creole languages form a multi-disciplinary perspective.