Hawaiian Language

I believe that the Hawaiian language is the most important thing that’s keeping the Hawaiian culture and traditions alive. I loved the video that Kamehameha schools made showing the History of the Hawaiian language. It showed when the language was thriving, when it was made a written language and the literacy rate was high, when there was a major decline that made it go underground, and then the amazing revitalization of the language. The part that made me angry was when we learned about the process in which the language was becoming more and more scarce. Like when the Republic of Hawai‘i passed the English-only law for instruction in the public school system, and if there was an opposition, the school would just not be federally recognized. I was just upset because the Hawaiians were eager to learn because they thought they had to, since the islands were evolving and becoming more of an English-speaking place. But then that eagerness was taken advantage of to the point where they couldn’t even speak Hawaiian in schools anymore. But I loved when the video spoke about the all the great things that happened to bring the language back. I’m just so grateful to all the people that pushed and helped to establish the Hawaiian immersion schools that we have now. I was lucky enough that my parents put me in Punana Leo and then Kula Kaiapuni Hawaiian immersion schools. It was really a great experience and I am looking forward to enrolling my children in immersion schools so that Hawaiian language will be used in our household every day to help do our part in the revitalization of this amazing language that has been through so much.

References:

http://www.ksbe.edu/2008/song-contest/program.pdf 

Language As An Identity Marker

I believe that language is the core of any culture. To survive, a culture or nation needs to keep their language alive, growing, and always changing to keep their identity from dying. I learned that in the past, Hawaiians went through a rough patch where they could not speak their native language. They were advised not to and to learn English cause that’s what the westerners thought had to be done; to make the Hawaiians more “civilized.” I got reminded of that also when I looked at the poem in the reading by Clarke about his Hualapai language, when he said “Don’t speak you language, it’s no good. Don’t wear your traditional clothes, it’s no good. Cut your hair, it’s no good.” It just made me kinda sad knowing that there are some people actually pushing other people to stop speaking their native language and do it their way instead. Because if a community of people stop speaking their language and stop doing their cultural traditions as passed down through generations, that people’s identity can perish also. I hope that this doesn’t happen anymore and that traditional and native languages all over the world would be revitalized and strengthened through the native people.

References:

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/SIL/Clarke.pdf 

Ideology of Language

Language is so important to any culture that is trying to thrive and be revitalized. If a language is not spoken in a certain community, the number of native speakers will just keep dwindling down because they’re not practicing the language daily and teaching it to their children. In some cases though, it’s hard to keep the language going when people in control are telling you not to, and that it’s not okay. Kind of like the Sami language with the Sami people. I watched a video about their language saying that only 1/3 of the Sami still speak it, because the authorities have been telling them for a while through many different sources that the Sami language is no good. And in the video, they say that this influence was so strong that parents started to believe that it might be risky for their children to learn and speak the language. This is why they stopped teaching it to their kids. More parents are realizing now that that was wrong and are now learning and teaching the language. In the reading, The Sami Case, by Håkan Rydving, it says that it seemed incomprehensible that the Sami have kept their language, but the explanation is that they have lived isolated from the Norwegians with an economy based almost only on reindeer.  But the Sami were economically dependent on Norwegian methods of working and on the Norwegian language, so it was fairly hard for them to keep their language still thriving. But they did, and now, more and more they are trying to revitalize the language and have many more speakers. The Sami peoples story of their language related so much to the Hawaiian language’s history. They both went through hard times but ultimately, both the Sami people and the Hawaiians are now revitalized and thriving; growing each day, which is how it should be so that the language is never lost.


References:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkG7psgdl1o

http://ir.minpaku.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/10502/1049/1/SES66_027.pdf