Hawaii is known for
its beautiful beaches, its touristy attractions and its welcoming people. They
picture us to live in grass huts and wear coconut bras while dancing hula all
day. But outside people don't realize what the true Hawaiians have been
through. The Hawaiian people had their land and culture taken away from them.
One of these things taken was their language, their main way of life. The
western influences slowly eliminated the Hawaiian language from Hawaii's
culture leaving the Hawaiians today barely able to speak the language.
The Hawaiians language played a big role
in their society, being their only way of passing down cultures, history and
traditions. To understand the importance of this, you must know the origin of
the Hawaiian people. Still unsettled, many believe that they derived from the
Tahitian or Marquesas race, because of the similarity between languages. Seeking
independence, the people traveled to Hawaii. They developed their own language.
Most other customs such as religion and government were developed after the
creation of the Hawaiian language. This means that the Hawaiian language was
the basis for their successful society. It allowed them to communicate between
each other and maintain each and every custom. This is what the Hawaiian
language did for the natives before the foreigners came and settled in Hawaii.
It provided the Hawaiians with a successful society.
The arrival of the westerns brought many
pros and cons to the Hawaiian language. Many think of their arrival as all around
bad, that all they did was terrorize the Hawaiian culture. Although this may be
somewhat true, they did however help the Hawaiians. Before their arrival,
the Hawaiian language was purely oral, meaning there was no written form of
their language. Captain Cook and the other westerns noticed this and provided
them with a Hawaiian alphabet, based on English. This made Hawaiians more
literate and also helped them become more of a successful society, being able
to now record most that occurred. But this was really the only way that the
westerns helped Hawaii. As more and more foreigners, also known as holes, began
to settle, they gained more and more power over the land and its people. They
eventually banned all Hawaiians from speaking their native language, feeling
that it gave the Hawaiians more power over the foriegners. This did not show
the equality the foreigners promised. It still affects all Hawaiians today.
Over the years the number of new generation Hawaiians able to speak the
language declined. The westerners were the main reason why the Hawaiian culture
and language are endangered, nearly extinct.
Because of the arrival of the foreigners,
most Hawaiians today are at a loss of their culture, unable to speak the
language. While the westerns were still settling Hawaii, they set up schools,
English being the only language. And since Hawaiian could not be spoken, Hawaiian
children were unable to be taught their native language. The affects today
because the language is still struggling to survive. An estimated 0.1% of
Hawaii's population can speak fluent Hawaiian. But there is still hope. Today,
there are public immersion preschools in which their main purpose is to teach
the dying language and keep it alive. Also, at the same time, some public high
schools here in Hawaii offer the language as courses. Although foreigners still
mostly inhabit Hawaii, people still strive to keep this language alive.
And this also means that the numbers of fluent speakers are, slowly but surely,
increasing. The Hawaiian language today is still a dying language, but people;
rather organizations are working to keep it a language.
People view Hawaiians very
stereotypically. They see us as always happy and very primitive. But they
are very wrong. The Hawaiians are an angry people, with a loss of many customs
and cultures. The foreigners that settled here took away and eliminated the Hawaiian
language from today’s culture. People don't realize the true history of Hawaii.
Although we do have many touristy attractions and lots of welcoming people,
there are always two sides of paradise.
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