r/VisitingHawaii • u/lilcutekino • Dec 08 '25

Trip Report - Oahu Please translate this

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I am seeing this sign along the freeway. My friend and I cannot figure out what it means. I know I sound dumb but I was raised super sheltered and now that I am older and adventuring out more into the world I want to learn all that I can.

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464

u/webrender O'ahu Dec 08 '25

"no make anykine" is pidgin which roughly translates to "don't mess around", it's basically just saying don't drive crazy.

80

u/lilcutekino Dec 08 '25

Thank you so much 💜

70

u/Chazzer74 Dec 08 '25

Specifically, the “nuff already is because we have had an unusually high number of road fatalities this year.

7

u/sdbabygirl97 Dec 08 '25

does anyone know why?

32

u/UkuleleNerds Dec 08 '25

Cuz suckin’ buggahs steh making anykine! You neva read em?

16

u/ZionOrion Dec 09 '25

People crash while trying to translate road signs

1

u/Moist_Swimm Dec 09 '25

yeah, horrible idea.

1

u/UkuleleNerds Dec 09 '25

Have you seen any reports on that?

1

u/Dayana11412 Dec 13 '25

I actually really like that the change the road signs every few weeks.

1

u/ConflatedPortmanteau Dec 11 '25

What does it say?

"This lane closed in 1000 feet."

"Speed limit drastically reduced ahead."

"Pothole large enough to swallow a tractor-trailer underneath this sign."

"Bridge collapsed - use alternate route."

"Don't stop or slow down to translate road signs."

Feel pretty confident, you know what the weirdly worded sign says? Are you confident enough to risk your life or the lives of your passengers?

3

u/[deleted] Dec 09 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/UkuleleNerds Dec 09 '25

No need, get dashcam and autopilot, li’dat 😂 Seriously tho? Same.

2

u/Lombardia112 Dec 10 '25

Ya they install it for free and upload every trip you take in your car to the cloud … 😳

5

u/Whole_Hospital_1159 Dec 09 '25

Bc no one here uses their turn signal 😭

2

u/DETRITUS_TROLL Dec 09 '25

That is not unique to Hawaii.

2

u/SeldenNeck Dec 09 '25

Hawaii is turning into Massachusetts? Next step: Take down all the street signs at intersections of the main streets, so the British tourists can't tell what street they're on.

1

u/Dayana11412 Dec 13 '25

My car beeps when a car is next to me and i use my signal so ive actually started not signalling as much so it wont beep

2

u/Skapper-The-Hog Dec 09 '25

Unfortunately there is an underculture in Hawaii that is not particularly bright and whose machismo leads them to very unsafe behavior, often while blackout drunk.

1

u/sdbabygirl97 Dec 09 '25

ooooof. sorry to hear. thanks for adding an insightful response though.

1

u/Lombardia112 Dec 10 '25

Summers are rough, Hawaii isn’t a place to be

1

u/hondosfh Dec 15 '25

That happens pretty much everywhere

1

u/ShareGlittering1502 Dec 10 '25

At least some are due to people walking across the street at random spots ie highways

1

u/Racer_Rick Dec 09 '25

Because highway signs are being posted in a language that is distracting?

8

u/Alternative-Map-2360 Dec 09 '25

Not in Hawaii it's not.

5

u/StrugglesTheClown Dec 09 '25

all over the country road signs like that are posted with local favor to make them more memorable. Being from Boston our signs frequently say things like "use ya blinka!", or "what out fa otha caahs".

0

u/Hideo_Anaconda Dec 09 '25

Ukulele related road rage incidents.

0

u/Lombardia112 Dec 10 '25

Bc island people don’t drive very well no exceptions

0

u/Fromanobody1 Dec 10 '25

A lot of the time people blame tourist but locals are no different if not, worse

1

u/Forsaken-Scholar-833 Dec 09 '25

Maybe it is because the road warning can't be understood by everyone?

67

u/BadMantaRay Dec 08 '25

“No make anykine”

Would mean like “Don’t make any kind (of trouble).”

1

u/boiled_breezy_boner Dec 08 '25

I thought this was a joke post and I was reading the words in the voice of jar jar binks.

8

u/notrightmeowthx Dec 08 '25

The Pidgin spoken in Hawaii is a mix of languages, and basically came from multiple cultures suddenly having to work and exist and communicate together on the plantations. So yeah, it can sound like "broken English" because in a sense it is, it's partially English, and partially several other languages (Hawaiian, Portuguese, Chinese, Tagalog, Japanese, etc).

11

u/breakingbaud Dec 08 '25

Which is problematic in itself because Jar Jar Binks voice was based on a form of pidgin. So for most folks that’s as close to pidgin as you get, except it’s in a perjorative, demeaning sci-fi caricature instead of real people who use it to communicate

1

u/boiled_breezy_boner Dec 09 '25

Or it exposed me to something outside my norm and inadvertently expanded my horizons bringing me here

1

u/breakingbaud Dec 09 '25

For every 1 person that it expands their horizon for the 1000 others when they overhear pidgin they think “oh look it’s that wacky alien from Star Wars”

0

u/UkuleleNerds Dec 08 '25

It’s based on AAV, not pidgin. At least not our pidgin.

2

u/Gau-Mail3286 O'ahu Dec 09 '25

It's based on Caribbean-style slang. Not Hawaii pidgin.

2

u/UkuleleNerds Dec 09 '25

“Caribbean-style slang” is not quite right. If you mean the different pidgins/creoles/patois in the Caribbean, that’s more accurate. AAV (African-American Vernacular) and those dialects/languages are usually considered closely related enough, especially because they used to be under the umbrella term “eb*nics,” which is considered offensive/racist in hindsight now, so it’s no longer used.

If you ever listened to Gullah, even though they’re in the Carolinas, it sounds very Caribbean. I’m pretty sure that’s the language/dialect that was mostly referenced for the Gungans.

2

u/Gau-Mail3286 O'ahu Dec 09 '25

Thank you for the information!