She was a true gem of the language, a native speaker of Hawaiian, and treasured teacher. Her passing is deeply felt in the Hawaiian language community.
The state legislature is gearing up for the 2005 legislative session.
Senator Kalani English mentioned a bill that would strengthen the use of Hawaiian language in government documents. I helped him put together a bill that was introduced last year; unfortunately it went nowhere due to the very high-visibility legislation that had to be dealt with. I hope he can get some movement on it this year.
Success of bilingual education in Ireland.
“An Irish-speaking school has reportedly joined the list of the top-10 feeder schools for Trinity College Dublin ahead of some of Ireland’s best-known fee-paying institutions.” This is similar to our experience. Nearly every 12th grade student that has graduated from our laboratory immersions school, Ke Kula ‘O Nawahiokalani’opu’u has been concurrently enrolled in university classes during their senior year in high school, and a very high percentage (in the 90% range) has continued into college. We heard critics for years telling us that our children would not be able to function in college if they received their elementary and secondary…
A hui hou e Alana…
I did my last regular appearance on Alana I Kai Hikina last night, but may return periodically as a guest or part-time DJ. Alana founder Makela Bruno-Kidani has returned from a few months off, allowing me to enjoy my Sunday evenings at home again. I’ll miss the comradery, though.
3rd Annual Hawai’i International Conference On Arts & Humanities.
I’ll be presenting at this conference on Thursday with my colleague Kiele Akana-Gooch. We’ll be discussing the development of the Ulukau Hawaiian Language Digital Library project, which seems to grow each day in breadth and depth.
Language Log reports Dr. James McCloskey’s reaction to the rebounding of Irish.
His observation of Irish gaining strength among second language learners (such as myself) but shrinking in the Gaeltacht is similar to our situation with Hawaiian, through we have only one “Gaeltacht” – the Ni’ihau community. I read and enjoyed Dr. McCloskey‘s book “Voices Silenced – Has Irish a Future?” An extract from his book is available online. I can add my own observations after spending three weeks in Glenn Colm Cille, Co. Donagal. My wife and I did not observe any younger people using Irish few women in their early 20s who worked at Oideas Gael, either for the school…
Bringing Back A Lost Language
[ From the San Jose Mercury, registration required ] With help from linguists, the decendants of the last speaker of Chochenyo are trying to revive the language, and our looking toward our efforts to revitalize Hawaiian for inspiration.
Language Log is a quite entertaining and informative collaborative blog on languages.
It includes a number of of great language blog links that will keep me busy over the Christmas holiday. There was an interesting post that discussed spelling mistakes in a recent article about our college. I’m curious regarding their use of the word “Hawai’ian” for Hawaiian, and emailed our thinking on the the issue. First, Hawaiian words cannot end in consonants, so it’s not a Hawaiian word. As far as I know the glottal is not written in English, so I don’t believe it is an accurate spelling for an English word, either. I don’t know any Hawaiian language instructor…
Talking a Language Back From the Brink.
The Chronicle Of Higher Education presents a nice feature on our faculty and our efforts to keep the Hawaiian language alive. Most of the people mentioned in the article have been at it a lot longer than I have, and I’m proud to work with them.
A sad day for the natural world.
As this article mentions, while many species become exctinct each year, it’s rare when we know the exact day that it happens. This may be the case for the po’ouli, one of the many native Hawaiian honeycreeper species that have become extinct or on their way there with the help of man. According to statics I’ve seen, Hawai’i is home to nearly 75% of the endangered plant and animal species in the US.