The return of Hawaiian: language networks of the revival movement

Abstract

Some 40 years ago, language transmission in Hawai‘i was interrupted among Hawaiians across all islands with the sole exception of language maintenance among a small community on the tiny, isolated Ni‘ihau Island. Today, Hawaiian has returned as spoken and written medium with some 5000–7000 new speakers. The present paper provides an up-to-date account of the sociolinguistic situation in Hawai‘i, and depicts the language ecological environment which allows for language revival in order to analyze how language revitalization differs from language revival. While language revitalization may happen in very different language ecologies, the revival of a no longer spoken language occurs only in late modern societies. The regaining of domains in language revival, i.e. once all domains had been lost, requires very different approaches than revitalization efforts. In Hawai'i, language revival is realized through networks and members of the language revival network use Hawaiian in all domains. The main objective of this network is to establish and maintain a Hawaiian-speaking environment and to produce new native speakers of Hawaiian.

Keywords:

• Hawaiian
• language revival
• language revitalization
• language networks
• immersion school
• new native speakers

Acknowledgement

Much of the information discussed here was gathered in interviews conducted by the authors with Larry Kimura and William ‘Pila’ Wilson. We gratefully appreciate the time and the insights they provided us with.

Notes

Other important Hawaiian language revival activities conducted at the University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa, with Professor Sam L. No‘eau Warner as a central figure, will not be discussed here (cf. Grenoble & Whaley, 2006, p. 100).

See Arnold, 2001 for details on Hawaiian language legislation, and Silver and Miller, 1997 for an overview of the linguistic situation of other indigenous language minorities in the USA.

This does not imply that learning English is suppressed. It is, however, taught through Hawaiian and from a perspective that within the network, English is to be viewed and used through Hawaiian and with Hawaiian having default primary status.

Kamehameha has been gradually moving from Hawaiian language study as enrichment towards a language revitalization-oriented perspective. In recent years, it has begun to provide regular supplementary funding support to the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo and in May of 2013 advertised for a position for Hawaiian language advancement (W. H. Wilson, personal communication, 2013).