Is the Hawaiian Language Dead or Alive?
Thousands more young people today speak ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i (Hawaiian language) than did their counterparts 30 years ago. Or at least they’re schooled in it. But is that enough to revive a language?
THE KEAWE ‘OHANA CARRIES ON THE MUSICAL TRADITION OF AUTIE GENOA, AS WELL AS THE HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE.
PHOTO: MATT MALLAMS
The Waikīkī Beach Marriott is hardly a hotbed of linguistic revolution. Even on Thursday nights, when the Keawe ‘ohana keeps alive the traditional repertoire of its late matriarch. Auntie Genoa Keawe sang at the Moana Terrace every week into her 89th year, and her presence remains. From a portrait hanging on the small stage, she beams out at the crowd as her son Gary Aiko plucks his bass, granddaughter Pōmaika‘i Keawe Lyman holds forth on ‘ukulele and vocals, and niece Momi Kahawaiola‘a accompanies on guitar. (Alan Akaka, not related to Aunty Genoa, serves as MC and steel guitar impresario.)
The crowd of 60 or so includes dazed tourists, drifting up from the beach or down from their rooms, as well as a coterie of local fans and a smattering of former Islanders, paying homage.
The show follows the usual script: the quartet is decked out in matching dresses and aloha shirts, Akaka keeps up a practiced patter and the standard songs go out—“Papalina Lahilahi” for the hula dancers, “The Hawaiian Wedding Song” for the honeymooners and “Alika” for the regulars.
The Hawaiian music, Hawaiian lyrics, Hawaiian mood—are all faithfully rendered. But is anyone speaking Hawaiian? Not on stage, and not in the audience.
Then the youngest generation of the Keawe clan takes the spotlight.
Lyman’s two daughters dance “Sophisticated Hula.” Her two sons dance “Boy from Laupahoehoe.” This is all just a warm up for 4-year-old Enosa’s rendition of “Ka Uluwehi o ke Kai.” The Edith Kanaka‘ole composition recalls the joys of gathering seaweed on a sparkling sand beach. Enosa knows every single word. And I don’t mean he has memorized them. He knows them.
All four siblings, like thousands of other fledglings across the Islands, are products of a steadily growing Hawaiian-language, immersion-school system. They have been happily gathering up Hawaiian words in the same way that Kanaka‘ole and her clan once gathered limu kohu—not just since they started to sing, but since they started to talk.
If the Hawaiian language has come back from the dead, or at least the seriously moribund, these might be the poster children of its resurrection.
POMAIKAI KEAWE LYMAN (CENTER) HAS MADE SURE THAT HER CHILDREN CAN SPEAK HAWAIIAN FLUENTLY.
PHOTO: MATT MALLAMS
The Great Comeback, Or, Come part-way back
Thirty years ago, in 1983, a group of Hawaiian-language scholars met at Hōkūlani Cleeland’s house on Kaua‘i to discuss the dismal state of the indigenous tongue. Their own informal survey showed that fewer than 50 children under the age of 18 then spoke the language fluently.
When children stop speaking a language, the language dies. (And languages are dying at a scary rate. Of the estimated 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, linguists say nearly half will disappear in this century. Today, we’re losing about one every two weeks.)
So the group at Cleeland’s house focused on children. Using a promising “language-nest” model out of New Zealand, they started a preschool in Kekaha, then started some on other islands. Using mānaleo (native speakers) from Ni‘ihau and elsewhere, they created an immersive environment for preschoolers and offered support to parents willing to learn the language themselves and use it at home.
Student by student, family by family, school by school, the language nests focused on Hawaiian sentences and fostered Hawaiian values. When the fledglings were ready for elementary school, the group lobbied for elementary schools. When the elementary school graduates were ready for middle school, it lobbied for middle schools. When the middle schoolers needed high schools, it demanded those, too.
The Kaua‘i group started a movement. The nonprofit corporation it founded, ‘Aha Pūnana Leo Inc., grew from a startup to a $5 million enterprise. Today there are 11 preschools and 20 state-funded elementary and secondary schools. Private-school behemoths Kamehameha and Punahou—late to the language party—have added Hawaiian for “foreign-language” credit.
PHOTO: MATT MALLAMS |
The University of Hawai‘i started teaching Hawaiian as a foreign language in 1922, introduced a B.A. in Hawaiian language in 1979 and initiated a Hawaiian Studies degree at UH-Hilo (taught entirely in Hawaiian) in 1982. At UH Mānoa, Hawaiian language was made an academic department with the creation of the Hawai‘inuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge in 2007. According to the college’s Nālani Balutski, a total of nine graduate and 111 undergraduate degrees have been awarded in Hawaiian language in the past six years. Maenette K.P. Ah Nee-Benham, the school’s dean, says that Hawaiian is the most popular and fastest growing language at the Mānoa campus.
But to focus only on formal education is to miss the larger picture. In the years since the Hawaiian Renaissance, what we know as “Hawaiian music” has moved from a canon of traditional compositions sung by the old guard, Aunty Genoa, Mahi Beamer and Gabby Pahinui, to a burgeoning category. A vanguard of singer-songwriters such as Kuana Torres Kahele and Kaumakaiwa Kanaka‘ole are composing new poetry in the ancient tongue, and they and others make the Nā Hōkū Hanohano Award for haku mele a hotly contested prize.
Similarly, Hawaiian-language skill has become ever more important at the Merrie Monarch Festival. And not just in the performance of chants. “Thirty years ago, when I was dancing with Nā Kamalei, movements were becoming bigger and more exaggerated to get the message across,” notes kumu hula Patrick Makuakāne. “Today, the dancing is more nuanced, much more connected to the poetry. The words are paramount again.”
It’s not just music and hula that are giving us a soundscape with more, and better, ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i. We have a “Hawaiian word of the day” on the radio, Hawaiian-language programming on cable’s ‘Ōiwi TV and a Hawaiian column every week in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Governmental ceremonies routinely begin with a chant or prayer, with an ever-broadening choice of speakers who can deliver them in Hawaiian. (The chanter at the Thomas Square Restoration Day ceremony on July 31 was a 30-year-old architecture Ph.D. student—and the youngest by far in the black-suited and red-caped retinue of the Royal Order of Kamehameha I.)
The fluid, vowel-heavy—and sometimes earthshakingly guttural—sounds of Hawaiian can be heard on the football field in Pālolo (where quarterbacks at Ānuenue call their plays in Hawaiian), at Starbucks in Kāne‘ohe (where kids from Samuel Kamakau tank up) and at McDonald's in Mānoa (where the speakers arrive on skateboards). Even Bank of Hawai‘i ATMs offer to dispense cash in Hawaiian. UH Hilo assistant professor Larry Lindsey Kimura estimates that fluent Hawaiian-language speakers, down to about 1,500 in 1983, now number more than 10,000.
Many more people use Hawaiian words, or even phrases. (Twenty-four thousand of us in 2008, according to census data.)
But, still, the Hawaiian language can hardly be called pervasive. Those 10,000 native speakers amount to less than 1 percent of the statewide population. Honolulu is no Montreal. While reporting this story, and purposely seeking out Hawaiian-friendly crowds, I didn’t hear more than “Hiki no?” (“Can do?”) at the Aquarium’s Ke Kani O Ke Kai concert. And I didn’t hear a shred of kūkākūkā (conversation) at the Lili‘uokalani Church lū‘au in Hale‘iwa. The only place I found an actual discussion in Hawaiian was in a room at UH Mānoa’s Kuykendall Hall, where a master’s candidate in Hawaiian language was defending her thesis to a total of nine graduate students and professors.
So, really, has ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i been brought back from the brink? Is it a living language, sprouting here and there, with a new generation poised to cultivate it in all corners of 21st-century life? Or is it just Latin for Hawai‘i—a language spoken only by priests and the faithful? ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i may be cool, but it rarely helps you get a job, rent an apartment or fall in love.
We can start each email with “Aloha,” end the day with “pau hana” time and even answer “‘ae” to the question, “hiki no?” That’s hardly a return to the level of fluency—and literacy—exhibited at the end of the 19th century, when hundreds of newspapers flourished, and Hawaiians were among the most literate people in the world.
RETIRED UH PROFESSOR EMILY HAWKINS (SECOND FROM RIGHT, IN HAT) LEADS A WEEKLY OLELO HAWAII GROUP. HERE, THEY VISIT KANIAKAPUPU, THE SUMMER HOME OF KAMEHAMEHA III.
Photo: Matt Mallams
Accidental immersion
Some activists say that the language never died, but persisted in “certain bubbles”—certain families, certain churches, certain civic clubs and certain hālau. And, to a certain extent, the resurgence of the language is a process of making those bubbles larger, and adding some new ones to the mix. The spread of Hawaiian often comes down to a few very motivated individuals who create their own small networks, often helped by the larger communities of support they find in schools and hālau.
Pōmaika‘i Keawe Lyman, 32, didn’t set out to create a bubble, but speaking Hawaiian has become integral to her sense of where she and her family fit into the world. Far from the stage at the Marriott, we meet one Friday night at Liliha Bakery, after she has put her kids to bed in Papakōlea. She speaks eloquently of her own language journey.
Lyman’s grandmother, Aunty Genoa Keawe, grew up hearing and speaking the language in its last throes. Born in 1918, she spoke Hawaiian with friends from her youth and sang in it for eight decades (sometimes incorrectly, she once joked). But she did not speak it to her children. Her eldest son, Gary, born in 1935, and her youngest, Eric, born in 1956, fit squarely into what is sometimes called the “gap generation”—born after Hawaiian was no longer in the conversational air, and educated before the renaissance.
At Punahou in the 1990s, Lyman describes her biggest preoccupation as how, at a school with so few Native Hawaiians (she let the five long and delicate fingers of one hand burst open to show me how many there were), she would land a Hawaiian boyfriend. After all, she wanted her children to qualify for Hawaiian Homelands, since she could not herself. (Her mother is Puerto Rican-Filipino, and Lyman is painfully aware of the power of blood quotient.)
Lyman had learned bits of Hawaiian in hula as a girl, and her grandmother had given her a Hawaiian name—Pōmaika‘imaliekekuinialohaokalani—set it to song, and explained the mele inoa (name chant) to her. Then, as a sophomore, Lyman suddenly decided to drop Japanese and start Hawaiian, which Punahou then offered as an elective.
Her immersion in ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i came later, and was accidental. Her oldest daughter, Malie, qualified for a Kamehameha Schools scholarship. On the list of accepted schools was ‘Aha Pūnana Leo O Honolulu. Lyman’s husband, himself a Kamehemeha graduate, resisted the idea of the children continuing in the immersion system after preschool. “There was a lot of unsurety,” Lyman says softly, “whether they would match up academically, or professionally or just in society.”
*Updated 6/1/13. Due to an editing error, our November 2013 feature "Hawaiian: Dead or Alive?" stated that the 10,000 native speakers of Hawaiian "amount to less than 0.1 percent of the statewide population." It should have read, less than 1 percent."
The family took the leap. Helped by courses offered for immersion-school parents, Lyman gave herself a crash course, learning alongside the children.
Her husband’s support came along, and Lyman’s own uncertainty has been replaced by a sense of connection to Hawaiian culture. Never was that connection clearer than when Malie was just learning how to speak in sentences. At that time, Aunty Genoa was in her late 80s.
“As my daughter was learning Hawaiian, she was speaking to my grandma, and I could listen to the two of them,” Lyman explains. “And it was good for my grandma, because by that time she was reverting to her earlier years. When she was my daughter’s age, she was speaking Hawaiian to her grandma. And this was in her home, in Papakōlea.
“Although I have lost my grandma, I feel that I have gained—not a replacement, but something that can fill the hole.”
Over the air, on the screen, in the supermarket
Lyman commits to the revival of the ‘ōlelo in ways both large (driving all four kids, every day, to Samuel Kamakau charter school in Kāne‘ohe) and small (writing all her checks in Hawaiian). Check writing may seem like an insignificant act of rebellion, but she isn’t the only person who mentions doing this as a way of asserting Hawaiian not just as an official state language, but as a living one.
Musician Kuana Torres Kahele said he and most of his Hawaiian-speaking friends write checks in Hawaiian, too. Kahele, 35, came to the checkwriting tactic through a different route. He starting learning Hawaiian when, at 10, he began singing his heart out. His mother, he says, “was raised mānaleo (a native speaker) in Waipi‘o Valley, and she started blasting me with all the mele she knew—and focused on my pronunciation.”
Kahele took ‘ōlelo class at Hilo High School in the early ’90s, because, he says, smiling, “Mom could help me with my homework.” By the time he graduated, he could hold a conversation.
“Mom gave me the tools to understand,” he says, “but music gave me insight into the old ways of speaking.” Kahele doesn’t want to be stuck in those old ways, though. So, when he is writing poetry, he hits the dictionary, seeking new words to express new nuances.
Or he hits up his relatives. For “Waimanu i ke Lauaha,” he went to Waipi‘o to talk to his aunties and uncles. They gave him the names of cliffs, the names of places, the names of waterfalls. The song has 11 verses. “When you go down there, you can see why there are so many verses. You cannot cut a place short.”
It’s one thing to hear that musicians are pushing themselves to renew poetry. But a living language needs to exist offstage. One of the most interesting efforts to assure that Hawaiian isn’t a fossilized language like Latin is the work of the Hawaiian Lexicon Committee. To a certain extent, the Hawaiian vocabulary froze in the 19th century, when a series of laws solidified English as the language of government and schools (see timeline). Formed in 1987, the Lexicon Committee brought native speakers and elders together to figure out how to add to the language contemporary words and concepts (like “snack,” “email” and “biological evolution”). In 1996, the committee released a new-words dictionary, Māmaka Kaiao, as a companion to the authoritative Hawaiian Dictionary by Pukui and Elbert.
With or without new songs and new words, anecdotes told to me by friends and acquaintances convinced me that there is in fact more Hawaiian in the air today. And not just words and phrases—real dialogue. A Mainland kumu hula, on a flight home, recalls sitting next to a young girl doing her homework in Hawaiian. Gerard Elmore, executive director of the ‘Ohina Short Film Showcase, noted an uptick—“the most we have ever had”—in Hawaiian-language films in 2013. A friend recalls reaching for a guava juice in a grocery store refrigerator, and hearing a mother scolding her kid in ‘ōlelo. And Mountain Apple Co. president Leah Bernstein says, these days, backstage at concerts, she’s the only one not speaking Hawaiian. “When the dancers’ kids ask me something,” she notes, “I answer, ‘Auntie doesn’t speak Hawaiian.’ Their eyebrows arch.”
Public agencies and private enterprise are both getting into the act. Thanks to bureaucrats, Hawaiian street names are now perfectly pronounced over the PA system on TheBus—in the easy-to-listen-to baritone of UH language professor Puakea Nogelmeier. And, in February 2011, travelers began to hear a greeting broadcast throughout Honolulu International Airport—first in Hawaiian, then in English: Aloha e nā makamaka kipa mai i ke Kahua Mokulele Kau‘āina O Honolulu! E nā ‘ōhua e ha‘alele ana, no ‘oukou ka maluhia o ka holo ‘ana a ho‘i hou mai. E nā malihini i hō‘ea mai me nā kama‘āina pū kekahi, ke aloha o ka ‘āina iā ‘oukou a pau! (“Welcome to the Honolulu International Airport. If you’re headed out, travel safely and come back soon. Kama‘āina, welcome home. And if you’ve just arrived, we hope that you enjoy your stay in our Islands!”)
Greeting both newcomers and kama‘āina in Hawaiian was a no-brainer, says Keli‘i Wilson, Hawai‘i Tourism Authority’s bilingual director of cultural affairs. “When you arrive in Paris, you hear French,” she says. “When you arrive at Narita, you hear Japanese.”
The Evangelist
Nogelmeier has been instrumental in other ambitious projects to revitalize the linguistic landscape. In 2012, he launched Ike Kū‘oko‘a (“Liberating Knowledge”), an effort to digitize 125,000 pages of the 19th-century Hawaiian-language newspapers. (Over eight months, 2,700 volunteers from across the globe transcribed 16,000 typed-up newspaper pages.)
He’s currently cooking up a five-step plan to give a boost to the “living” part of the language revitalization effort. The plan starts with a TheBus App (providing pronunciation, meaning and a story for every stop). Then it moves to the movies (just as Star Wars was translated into Navajo, blockbusters will be created with lip-synched Hawaiian versions). He imagines a full-time, 24/7 Hawaiian-language radio station and more Hawaiian TV programming. In homage to a group that used to meet Tuesday nights at Ala Moana Beach Park, he’s looking to start daily conversation groups at different sites. Then there is “guerrilla public language”: developing audio and text cheat sheets with Hawaiian expressions to fill the “vacated spaces” of elevators, Zippy’s menus and Macy’s bathrooms.
He seems to be able to will the preposterous into being. Sixty years old, with a fringe of reddish hair, Nogelmeier started studying ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i when he arrived in Honolulu as an 18-year-old from Minnesota. He found one mentor, Theodore Kelsey, who had learned Hawaiian in the 1890s. Then he found others. Much later, he went the university route, earning a master’s in Pacific Island Studies and a Ph.D. in Anthropology.
When asked about the state of the Hawaiian language, he leans back on one of the generous pūne‘e (couches) in his Kalihi home. “It’s strong in some places, but it’s tenuous,” he answers. “It is not secure as a living language. But it’s sure a lot more secure than it was 30 years ago.”
“In the ’70s,” he continues, “I felt like a renegade soldier. I don’t feel like I’m part of a brigade today, but I feel part of a community. Maybe a disjointed community, but a community.”
The cycle restored
One member of that community is Larry Lindsey Kimura, the UH Hilo professor who was present at that fateful meeting on Kaua‘i in 1983, when scholars decided to focus on children. “Language is sometimes taken for granted,” says Kimura. “But it bears many aspects of our humanity beyond communication—who we are, how we think. If the Hawaiian language does not survive, then we as Hawaiians don’t survive.”
“Thirty years after the first babies started speaking Hawaiian at Pūnana Leo, we see them speak Hawaiian to their own little babies. The cycle is gradually being restored.”
Kimura’s words came back to me when Pōmaika‘i Keawe Lyman, working on her grilled butter rolls at Liliha Bakery, said, “Going to Punahou, I was given the basics of how to function in society—but not the basics of who I am.” Her voice grew steadier. “My children are bright. They are able to switch. They will learn how to survive in society. They could grow up to run a lo‘i, or be a kumu hula, or just go back to these schools as teachers.
“But I know that they know who they are—they have an identity, a purpose, a connection to the land and their ancestors. They know that there’s a reason for the rain, for the clouds.”
The Rebirth of the Hawaiian Language • a Timeline
1978
The State Constitutional Convention designates Hawaiian as one of the state’s official languages.
1979
UH Mānoa initiates a B.A. in Hawaiian language and a companion degree in Hawaiian Studies.
1980
The state Department of Education (DOE) receives money from the state to begin a comprehensive sequential program of instruction in Hawaiian language, culture and history in public elementary schools.
1982
UH Hilo initiates a Hawaiian Studies degree taught in Hawaiian. It's the first time that Hawaiian has been used as a medium of government-funded education since 1895.
1983
A survey estimates that about 1,500 people remain in Hawai‘i who can speak Hawaiian fluently, fewer than 50 of them children.
1983 (continued)
Hawaiian-language teachers Ilei Beniamina, Hōkūlani Cleeland, Kauanoe Kamanā, Larry Kimura, No‘eau Warner, Koki Williams and Pila Wilson meet on Kaua‘i to discuss the dismal state of the Hawaiian language. They form a grassroots organization, ‘Aha Pūnana Leo Inc., “The Language Nest Corporation,” on Jan. 12.
1984
The first Pūnana Leo preschool opens with 12 students in Kekaha, Kaua‘i.
A bill is submitted to the Legislature to provide Pūnana Leo with the same status accorded private foreign-language schools. Another bill to allow Hawaiian as a medium of education in Hawai‘i public schools is submitted. Neither bill passes.
1985
Pūnana Leo O Honolulu opens in Kalihi. Pūnana Leo O Hilo opens. Inadequate funding results in strong parent participation via in-kind service. This develops into a hana makua, or “parent-participation,” component.
1986
The Hawai‘i state Legislature passes bills removing legal barriers for Pūnana Leo and allowing Hawaiian as a medium of instruction in public schools.
1987
The Hawaiian Lexicon Committee is established to create words for current new concepts in the progression of time, with emphasis on the curriculum content of the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program.
The DOE opens the first elementary indigenous-language immersion classes in the United States, on a trial basis, at Keaukaha Elementary in Hilo, and Waiau Elementary in Pearl City.
1988
The state Board of Education reviews the immersion program and deems it successful. Kula Kaiapuni is allowed to continue another year.
The Hawai‘i state Legislature passes the Native Hawaiian Education Act (NHEA). drawing attention to the high literacy rates of Hawaiians at the time of annexation and the sharp drop during the period of American control.
1989
Eighty children on four islands attend preschool at Pūnana Leo.
The state Legislature establishes the Hale Kuamo‘o Hawaiian Language Center at UH Hilo to provide support and curriculum materials.
‘Aha Pūnana Leo receives funding through the U.S. Department of Education under Title IV.
1990
President Bill Clinton signs the Native American Languages Act, sponsored by Hawai‘i’s Sen. Daniel Inouye, partly modeled on the 1987 Native American languages resolution of the Hawai‘i state Legislature.
1991
Nearly 500 children, ages 2 to 11, are to be taught in Hawaiian in the academic year. The Board of Education approves continuation of the Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i program through grade 12 with one hour of English a day beginning in fifth grade.
1992
The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands commissioners approve the site on Hawaiian Homes Land at Waimea, Hawai‘i, for Pūnana Leo O Waimea.
Hōkūle‘a returns from the South Pacific, and U.S. Customs agent Lyons Naone conducts his inspection in Hawaiian.
1993
Four hundred children are enrolled in Kula Kaiapuni.
Hui Hi‘i Pēpē, a mother-infant play group, begins at the future Pūnana Leo O Kona site. Pūnana Leo O Kona expands to a full-day preschool.
Ni‘ihau families on Kaua‘i form Hui Ho‘ona‘auao O Nā Mākua and request Hawaiian as a medium of education for their children through sixth grade at Kekaha School. Parents boycott the public schools when the request is denied.
1994
Children in Pūnana Leo are now at 155. Enrollment in DOE immersion programs for grades K-6 is offered at six schools, with more than 600 students. Enrollment in classes at UH Mānoa has risen to nearly 1,700 from 700 in 1989. State funds for immersion classes: $900,000.
1994 (continued)
Leokī, the first computer bulletin-board system operating in a Polynesian or Native American language, is established, and Kualono, the website of the Hale Kuamo‘o, debuts on the World Wide Web.
The deed with which the Navy conveyed the island of Kaho‘olawe to the state is written entirely in Hawaiian and the 6-and-a-half-hour ceremony on the former Target Island is conducted entirely in Hawaiian.
OHA runs a TV ad featuring several people speaking Hawaiian with English subtitles.
1995
‘Aha Pūnana Leo assists Hilo Kula Kaiapuni families in renting a building for an intermediate/high school program to be named after the noted Hawaiian scholar and politician, Joseph Nāwahīokalani‘ōpu‘u. OHA provides a grant of $2.1 million to ‘Aha Pūnana Leo to purchase a permanent site near Hilo to house the Nāwahīokalani‘ōpu‘u program. Nāwahīokalani‘ōpu‘u becomes the first of three model school programs administered by ‘Aha Pūnana Leo in partnership with DOE and Ka Haka ‘Ula o Ke‘elikōlani.
1996
Pūnana Leo enrollment reaches 219. More than 1,500 students are enrolled in Kula Kaiapuni. In addition, 1,800 people are taking Hawaiian language in public high schools.
The Board of Education approves Ānuenue Elementary on O‘ahu as the state’s first kindergarten-to-high-school total immersion site.
Gov. Benjamin Cayetano proclaims 1996 to be the “Year of the Hawaiian Language.”
1998
Sixteen-hundred students are enrolled in public and private immersion classes, with 2,500 taking ‘Ōlelo classes in high school, and 2,500 are enrolled in college courses.
Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani College (at UH Hilo) begins its two-year master's program in Hawaiian Language and Literature, the first master's program focusing on, and taught entirely in, a Native American language. Twelve students enrolled in the first class.
Kahuawaiola Hawaiian Medium Teacher Certification Program at Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani College becomes the first teacher certification program conducted entirely in a Native American language.
1998 (continued)
‘Aha Pūnana Leo funds translation of the popular Netscape Web browser into Hawaiian, the first indigenous language to be used and only the second non-English translation completed independently of Netscape Communications.
The first edition of Māmaka Kaiao: A Modern Hawaiian Vocabulary is published by the Hawaiian Lexicon Committee.
1999
The immersion program now encompasses 16 public schools with about 1,600 students and a $1.1 million statewide budget.
For the first time in more than 100 years, a class of students educated entirely in Hawaiian from kindergarten to 12th-grade graduates. Five seniors graduate at Nāwahīokalani‘ōpu‘u and six at Ānuenue. All Nāwahīokalani‘ōpu‘u seniors also pass a university English composition placement examination.
2000
Kamehameha Schools establishes a strategic plan that includes among its goals and priorities the cultivation, perpetuation and practice of ‘ike Hawai‘i, including the Hawaiian language. All Kamehameha students will be required to learn some Hawaiian.
2001
Maui graduates its first immersion senior class from Ke Kula Kaiapuni Ki‘eki‘e ‘O King Kekaulike.
2002
Kaua‘i graduates its first immersion senior class from Ke Kula Kaiapuni Ki‘eki‘e ‘O Kapa‘a.
The first M.A. degree in Hawaiian Language and Literature is awarded at UH Hilo, to Hiapo Perreira, marking the first time in the nation a student has received an M.A. in any Native American language.
Apple Computer introduces Hawaiian-language support into Macintosh OS X 10.2 (“Panther”), which includes a Hawaiian keyboard in all of its new computers and the ability to type ‘okina (glottal stop) and kahakŌ (macron).
The first Hawaiian-language classes are offered via the Internet, through Leokī (“strong voice”), taught by Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani to 14 students in seven states. Subsequent classes included students from more than 20 states, Japan, Switzerland and Germany.
2002 (continued)
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin publishes Kauakūkalahale (“the rain of Honolulu”), the first Hawaiian-language column in a mainstream daily newspaper since 1949.
2003
Ulukau, the Hawaiian Language Digital Library project, goes online, making available more than 100,000 pages of searchable newspaper archives, books, dictionaries, the Hawaiian Bible, Ka Ho‘olina academic journal and other source material in the Hawaiian language.
Bishop Museum’s Hawaiian-language newspapers project, Ho‘olaupa‘i, starts to digitize pages from 125 different Hawaiian-language newspapers published from the early 1800s to mid-1900s. The longest running was Ka Nupepa Kuakoa, in print from 1861 to 1927. It had a total of 125,000 broadsheet pages, or 1 million manuscript pages.
2004
The UH Board of Regents approves UH Hilo’s first doctoral program, Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani’s Ph.D. in Indigenous Language and Cultural Revitalization.
2005
Kalena Silva at UH Hilo estimates 6,000 to 8,000 Hawaiian-language speakers throughout the state, most under 30. There are now 19 immersion sites, with 1 percent of the state’s
180,000 public school students attending immersion programs, and 100 students majoring in Hawaiian at UH Hilo.
‘Aha Pūnana Leo institutes a program to support parents who are fluent in Hawaiian and using Hawaiian as the language of their homes before their children enter Pūnana Leo. This Hui Hi‘i Pēpē established at Nāwahīokalani‘ōpu‘u takes children of Hawaiian-speaking working parents as early as 6 weeks of age and cares for them entirely in Hawaiian.
The UH Board of Regents approves offering an M.A. in Hawaiian and an M.A. in Hawaiian Studies at UH Mānoa.
Hawaiian is the only indigenous language in the U.S. that showed growth in the 2000 census.
2008
About 1,800 K-12 students attend immersion programs. The 2008 graduating class had 66 students.
2009
‘Ōiwi TV partnered with Oceanic Time Warner Cable, Kamehameha Schools and ‘Aha Pūnana Leo to establish the first Native-Hawaiian-owned and -operated television station.
2010
Two thousand students attend Hawaiian immersion programs in 16 public schools and six public charter schools.
Hawaiian-language educators petition the federal government to exempt students from English-language testing standards and other No Child Left Behind mandates.
2012
The total of immersion campuses statewide drops to 20; there are more than 450 graduates.
2013
Today there are 11 Pūnana Leo preschools on five islands, as well as 20 elementary, middle and high school immersion schools statewide. Approximately 2,370 students are enrolled for fall 2013.
Scholars estimate that there are 10,000 people who speak the Hawaiian language fluently.
Sources: ‘Aha Pūnana Leo, Hawai‘i State Library, The Honolulu Advertiser, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Spirit of Aloha, additional interviews by Constance Hale
