Learning a language as well as its creole

A creole language is a language that develops out of a pidgin of a language, and is often a simplified version of the original language. In places where creoles are used, they can often be learned and used as a primary language, with or without supplemental use of the language it developed from. Certain aspects can be different, such as the phonetics, semantics and syntax, with the vocabulary involved being the most familiar in reference to the original language. Attempting to learn a language as well as a creole of it can prove quite frustrating because of these differences.

The comparison I would like to draw here is between Standard American English and Hawaiian Creole English. The easiest thing to start with is comparing vocabularies. HCE primarily pulls from SAE, but also contains many words of other languages such as Hawaiian, Portuguese, Japanese, Tagalog, Korean, and Mandarin. This became the case because of the melting pot Hawai’i happened to become at the time of HCE’s origin. In plantations where field workers from many countries came together, they had to develop a way of effectively communicating. It became so popular that it expanded from the plantations to the homes of most of the local communities. By the time I was raised, it had become a language that children would learn as their first language unless influenced otherwise.

The phonology of HCE is the most interesting aspect to me as it isn’t really similar to much else. Phonotactic constraints immediately become evident upon hearing it, typically aiming to reduce the amount of sounded consonants, and modifying pronunciations to fit this goal. An example of this is the ‘th’ sound being changed to a ‘d’. This becomes dis, and that becomes dat. It isn’t a extremely plosive ‘d’ sound but it definitely changes from the fricative sound of ‘th’. It feels easier to use the plosive sound. Another example of this is cutting the ends of consonant clusters and end of words, such as fast, and kind. Fast becomes fass, as in class, and kind becomes kine, as in mine. This creates an interesting sound that is smoother when spoken in sentences (at least to me) when compared to SAE.

The syntax is an interesting mix. The syntax pulls almost solely from Hawaiian, and mostly follows a word order of VSO, as opposed to the SVO of English. This isn’t too drastic of a change, but it is enough to make it sound a bit odd, especially when coupled with the other aspects. This results in words mostly making sense to English speakers, but the syntax throwing off the interpretation of it.

The semantics can also attribute to the difficulty, with the famous phrase ‘da kine’ used to illustrate this. ‘Da kine’ (the kind) can be used as a noun, adjective, and verb at the same time. A sentence like, “ we wen da kine with da kine over by da kine”, being something that can be used, and it is quite often. The context is obviously important in understanding it, but it still can be confusing.

I’m curious if other people feel the same way about learning two similar languages at the same time, and finding a balance between trying to develop one over the other. I personally consider HCE to be my first language, with SAE being something I learned properly mostly through school. It makes it hard to stay in character speaking SAE, because comfort reverts me to speaking a more comfortable tongue. Is this as much of a problem for learning two completely different languages at the same time?