Hawaiian Language Usage

As seen in the song “Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride” from the 2002 Disney movie Lilo and Stitch,code switching between the Hawaiian language and English is common for literary works such as poems or songs. Code switching is when a bilingual person switches between the two or more languages that they know while they are speaking, but in a song, it is clearly done on purpose. There is a movement to preserve the Hawaiian language, culture, and history because within the past few decades there has been a decline of the Hawaiian identity. 

The Hawaiian language has gone through some tough history. The United States forced the islands to assimilate, or actively fit in, to American culture. Because of that, schools were forced to be taught in English, in order for students to partake in standardized testing that happens nationwide. Newer generations are not being taught to be active participants in the language, instead, now they can barely understand their grandparents when they talk to them. Children in schools are also learning about American history, rather than just Hawaiian history. However, even if they did learn about Hawaiian history in schools, Noelani Arista explains in her article that Hawaiian history has been overwritten by the United States. They did this because there was no formal written history of Hawaii, everything was shared through oral tradition, or simply stories being passed down. When people wrote the “history” of Hawaii as a state, they disregarded mayor events and cultural elements prior to the island’s statehood. Additionally, writers of Hawaiian history even sugar coated it with Christianity and omitted any other beliefs. Overall, younger generations are not exposed to the real history of their land, or even to their own language because of the pressure the United States school system puts on their schools, and writers that have altered Hawaii’s history.

But what does all this mean for the language? The Hawaiian language can be considered in danger of becoming extinct. William Wilson and Kauanoe Kanana, explain that newer generations are only understanding words or phrases of the language now, and cannot even communicate with their elders. This causes the problem with history too, now these younger generations cannot learn about Hawaiian history and culture through oral tradition. Recently, however, there has been an influx of youth starting to bring the language back. Wilson and Kanana found that young people are interested in using the language when it comes to participating in certain cultural activities. Which ties us back to Lilo and Stitch, code switching helps the language be exposed to non-native speakers, and even native speakers who need a boost of confidence to still be interested in keeping their language alive. While code switching can be seen as lazy or informal, it can be considered a unique technique for literary productions. In this case, the song “Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride” has continuous switching between Hawaiian and English to showcase the beauty of the two languages together to viewers of the movie.

     

                       

Graph to compare what languages are spoken in Hawaii versus the U.S. as a whole. Here, one can see that Hawaiian is one of the lowest percentages of a type of language spoken in Hawaii today.