Native Hawaiians - Hawaiian Language

Hawaiian Language

The Hawaiian language was once the primary language of the native Hawaiian people. Today, native Hawaiians predominately speak the English language because of over a century of being a part of the United States of America, as a Territory and then as a State of the Union. Another large contributing factor was an 1896 law that required that English "be the only medium and basis of instruction in all public and private schools." This law prevented the Hawaiian language from being taught as a second language. Some native Hawaiians (as well as non-native Hawaiians) have learned the native Hawaiian language as a second language. As with others local to Hawaii, native Hawaiians often speak Hawaiian Creole English (referred to in Hawai'i as Pidgin), a creole which developed during Hawaiʻi's plantation era in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with the influence of the various ethnic groups living in Hawaii during that time.

The Hawaiian language has been promoted for revival most recently by a state program of cultural preservation enacted in 1978. Programs included the opening of Hawaiian language immersion schools and the establishment of a Hawaiian language department at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. As a result, Hawaiian language learning has climbed among all races in Hawaiʻi.

In 2002, the University of Hawaii at Hilo established a masters program in the Hawaiian Language. In fall 2006, they established a doctoral (Ph.D) program in the Hawaiian Language. In addition to being the first doctoral program for the study of Hawaiian, it is the first doctoral program established for the study of any native language in the United States of America. Both the masters and doctoral programs are considered by global scholars as pioneering in the revival of native languages.

Hawaiian is still spoken as the primary language by the residents on the private island of Niʻihau.