September 8, 2007 Aloha mai kakou (greetings to all) My name is Joseph Donaghy, and I am an Assistant Professor of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo. Some of you may know me by my Hawaiian name Keola. It is not my legal name, but given to me in my youth by a Hawaiian family that I was very close to, and I have used it for many years. Late last year I applied to the Ph.d. program in ethnomusicology at University College Cork, and received my word of my acceptance early this year. I immediately contacted…
Thinking Ulukau and Social Networks
I spent two days in strategic planning meetings with Keiki Kawai‘ae‘a, the director of our Hawaiian Language Center and Bob Stauffer, the manager of Ulukau, our Hawaiian language digital library. Ulukau really started out as a skunkworks project, modeled after the M?ori N?pepa program. It has since passed that site in size and scope. It started several years ago with 50 hits per month and now serves over 6,000,000 documents a year. As we were talking about the site, Keiki compared the site to a traditional library, and says she wanted and atmosphere that felt more like Borders. I suggested…
Hawaiian Immersion Football
There is a pretty amazing tribute to the Hawaiian immersion students and in particular those at ?nuenue School on O‘ahu on Billy V’s HawaiianBroadcast.com. Check it out, very moving.
Podcamp Ireland Promo in Hawaiian
I’m really looking forward to meeting some of the folks whose work I have admired for quite a while. Bernie asked if there could be a Hawaiian language promo for Podcamp Ireland, so I obliged. I think he was just kidding.
Is Google In Your Language Still Alive?
Google offers an impressive list of languages in its language options, including Klingon, Elmer Fudd, and Pig Latin. The language interface options states “If you don’t see your native language here, you can help Google create it by becoming a volunteer translator,” and provides a link for the Google In Your Language program. Looks impressive. I recently learned that some people in Aotearoa have translated the Google search interface into M?ori, and I have tried in vain to reach the person responsible for coordinating this within Google so that we could provide a Hawaiian translation. No joy. There is a…
Oideas Gael director reacts to Irish language report
Our friend Liam Ó Cuinneagáin comments on a recent report regarding the current status and future of the Irish language.
Geekly Bonding
There is nothing that brings a father and teenage daughter together like a piece of new technology. As mentioned previously, I purchased a Motorola V551 GSM phone for her. It arrived, and after comparing coverage areas in NY, we signed up for a pay-as-you-go plan with Cingular/AT&T. It turns out most of her friends have Cingular/AT&T as well, and their calls to each other are free. We then spent time togther figuring out how to sync her Mac’s Address Book and that in the phone, editing MP3 files that she could move to the phone to use as ring tones…
Conversation On Hawaiian Social Network Space
I spent nearly an hour on Skype with Conn Ó Muíneacháin in Ireland this morning. The topic: minority languages in the social network space. I was sick as a dog all weekend, and while lying in bed had a lot of time to ponder our college’s next move in regards to providing telecommunication services through the medium of Hawaiian. While Conn has no specialized training in language perpetuation or sociology (nor do I), I felt that he is very much a kindred spirit in his desire to be able to use his language in as many daily contexts as are…
iPhone Supports Hawaiian Diacritics!
A colleague of mine showed up to work with an iPhone, so the first thing we did was to check if its email program supports Hawaiian characters. He already had it set up to check his .Mac account, so he sent himself an email from GMail which used the Hawaiian keyboard that ships with OS X. A few moments later is showed up on his iPhone, with the diacritics showing in both the subject field as well as the body text. Amazing! We haven’t found a way to generate the ‘okina and kahak? on the iPhone, but at least it…
Hawaiian Social Network Quandry
One of the blessings of being away in Ireland for nine months is that it will give me some separation and time to think out the future of our Hawaiian language technology initiatives, such as Leok? (our Hawaiian language intranet system built on FirstClass), Ulukau (our Hawaiian digital library) and the use of the Ka Leo Hawai‘i archives (about 700 hours worth of interviews with Hawaiian language speakers conducted in the 1970s and 1980s). I have been wavering back and forth as to whether or not it is worthwhile to us to continue using FirstClass, or move on to some…