The Language And History Of The Hawaiian Language

Worldwide four languages die every two months. Of the 6,000 known only 3,000 will be left by the end of the 21st century (Schwetizer). Hawaiian, one of the two languages in the state of Hawaii, is spoken by 8,000 of 400,000 ethnic Hawaiians and used in all domains, including oral literature, songs, and religion (“The Hawaiian Language”). Although Hawaiian was once the major language spoken in the Hawaiian Islands, today only a few thousand of Hawaii 's inhabitants claim it as a mother tongue (“Hawaiian”). The term "Hawaiian" comes from the name of the largest island, Hawai 'i in a North Pacific archipelago. The name of the island first appeared in written English when the island was discovered by British explorer James Cook, who wrote the name

The American board of Commissioner for Foreign Missions sent the missionaries to Hawaii to transform and civilize the people by introducing churches, schools and the press (Rhodes; Greene). When missionaries first arrived in 1820, they converted the oral language to written, so they were capable of conveying the Bible to the Hawaiian people ("Hawaiian Language"). Even though the untrained missionaries couldn’t distinguish between t and k, l and r, or b and p they still managed to come up with the written version of Hawaiian. By the mid 1820 the missionaries had adopted an alphabet and reduced the spoken Hawaiian to the written word. They began to print text books to translate religious materials especially the Bible into the Hawaiian language. The missionaries even built schools for the Hawaiians to attend, and soon the majority of the population could read and write (Rhodes;

White Western men brought diseases to Hawaii such as, small pox, measles, Hansen 's disease, whooping cough, influenza and gonorrhea ("Annexation of Hawaii; Post Contact Hawaii"). By 1920 pure Hawaiians suffered from a huge population loss of 23,723 and their life expectancy was only 35 years ("Post Contact Hawaii"). They lost the majority of their freedom because they were outnumbered by Americans ("Annexation of Hawaii"). Tittles to thousands of acres had fallen into the hands of non-Hawaiians due to the land being sold or leased to foreigners in payment of debts and also in exchange for foreign goods and supplies. Using Hawaiian in public and private schools became outlawed on the United States policy ("A Time Line of Revitalization"). Teachers were threaten they would be fired if they spoke Hawaiian with students. Many parents insisted on talking to their children only in Hawaiian, but the schools encouraged the students to only reply to their parents in English to have some type of enforcement to the annexation of using English