Prosodic features

Stress

In Hawai‘i Creole, morphologically simple words of two syllables derived from English usually have primary stress on the same syllable as in English. However, there are some exceptions, as illustrated by the following examples (with the stressed syllable in Hawai‘i Creole and in the English equivalent both shown in bold): beisbawl /beɪs'bɔl/ ‘baseball’, chapstik /ʧɑp'stik/ ‘chopstick’, hedeik /hed'eɪk/ ‘headache’, dedlain /dæd'lɑɪn/ ‘deadline’ (Odo 1975: 16). Of words that have more than two syllables, there are many words in Hawai‘i Creole which have primary stress on a different syllable from that in English. This is especially true of English words in which the first syllable is stressed, such as words ending in -ary, -ony or -ory (Bickerton and Odo 1976: 50). Take, for example, dikshanaeri /dikʃɑ'næri/ ‘dictionary’, inventawri /invæn'tɔri/ ‘inventory’, saeramoni /særɑ'moni/ ‘ceremony’. Other examples are: harakein /hrken/ ‘hurricane’, aelkahawl /ælkɑ'hɔl/ ‘alcohol’, shchrawbæri /ʃʧrɔ'bæri/ ‘strawberry’, haspitol /hɑs'pitol/ ‘hospital’, and kaetalawg /kæta'lɔg/ ‘catalogue’.

Another way in which Hawai‘i Creole differs from English, at least in the basilectal and mesolectal varieties, is that syllables that do not have primary stress receive slightly more stress than in English. A syllable that has tertiary stress in English may have secondary stress in Hawai‘i Creole. So for example, one may hear the following pronunciations: /'beɪ,bi/  ‘baby’, /'bil,diŋ/ ‘building’ (Odo 1975: 15). Also, as mentioned above, vowels in syllables without primary or secondary stress are not necessarily reduced to schwa, but rather the full vowel is used. This also leads to syllables being given secondary stress in Hawai‘i Creole when they are unstressed or given tertiary stress in English. This secondary stress may also result in voiceless stops being aspirated where there is no aspiration in English, e.g. Jæpæniz [,ʤæ,phæ'niz] ‘Japanese’, kiten ['k^hi,t^hen] ‘kitten’, chikin ['tʃ^hi,k^hin] ‘chicken’.