Feeling that chicken skin stuff. (getting goose bumps like many other things are expressed differently in Hawaii)(Vantagepoint)(Column)

Cheecken skeen stuff." I had no idea what the man was talking about. I was in Honolulu, Hawaii for a board meeting of the Japanese American National Museum where Arnold Hiura, the curator of the museum's Hawaii exhibit, was describing his reaction to a moving experience. I could guess he was saying "chicken skin stuff" in the Hawaiian pidgin accent, but I still couldn't figure out what it meant. After his talk, I discreetly asked a Hawaiian lady what was meant by the baffling phrase. "Oh, chicken skin stuff," she repeated, smiling benignly. She explained that it was an expression comparable to the feeling of getting "goose bumps."

We may all be Americans but the …