Hey, Haole, you speak da kine or what?

In most instances, language isn’t sport.

Growing up in Hawaii, as a white kid, trying to understand some of my peer’s dialect was more challenging than any sport I have ever participated in…at least for the first couple of years.

A recent article on CNN.com claims “Pidgin English now an Official Language of Hawaii,” but if the “locals” are anything like they were in the 1980’s, they are scoffing at that claim and surely insist that the broken-English vernacular has been, and always will be, the official language of the Islands.

It shouldn’t be too hard for Montanans to...