Hawaiian Language: Past, Present, Future presents aspects of Hawaiian and its history that are rarely treated in language classes. The major characters in this book make up a diverse cast: Dutch merchants, Captain Cook’s naturalist and philologist William Anderson, ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia (the inspiration for the Hawaiian Mission), the American lexicographer Noah Webster, philologists in New England, missionary-linguists and their Hawaiian consultants, and many minor players. The account begins in prehistory, placing the probable origins of the ancestor of Polynesian languages in mainland Asia. An evolving family tree reflects the linguistic changes that took place as these people moved east. The current versions are examined from a Hawaiian-centered point of view, comparing the sound system of the language with those of its major relatives in the Polynesian triangle. More recent historical topics begin with the first written samples of a Polynesian language in 1616, which led to the birth of the idea of a widespread language family. The next topic is how the Hawaiian alphabet was developed. The first efforts suffered from having too many letters, a problem that was solved in 1826 through brilliant reasoning by its framers and their Hawaiian consultants. The opposite problem was that the alphabet didn’t have enough letters: analysts either couldn’t hear or misinterpreted the glottal stop and long vowels. The end product of the development of the alphabet—literacy—is more complicated than some statistics would have us believe. As for its success or failure, both points of view, from contemporary observers, are presented. Still, it cannot be denied that literacy had a tremendous and lasting effect on Hawaiian culture. The last part of the book concentrates on the most-used Hawaiian reference works—dictionaries. It describes current projects that combine print and manuscript collections on a searchable website. These projects can include the growing body of material that is being made available through recent and ongoing research. As for the future, a proposed monolingual dictionary would allow users to avoid an English bridge to understanding, and move directly to a definition that includes Hawaiian cultural features and a Hawaiian worldview.

Hawaii is without parallel as a crossroads where languages of East and West have met and interacted. The varieties of English (including neo-pidgin) heard in the Islands today attest to this linguistic and cultural encounter. "Da kine talk" is the Island term for the most popular of the colorful dialectal forms--speech that captures the flavor of Hawaii's multiracial community and reflects the successes (and failures) of immigrants from both East and West in learning to communicate in English.

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, University of Münster (Englisches Seminar), course: Seminar Varieties of Standard English around the World, language: English, abstract: “Pidgins and Creoles are not full or real languages.” Pidgins and Creoles seem to have negative connotations. Like Mühlhäusler argues in his abstract, the history of examining pidgin and creole languages can be seen as a consequence of this view. “Rather they are broken English/French (the popular view), marginal languages (Reineke), ‘Ludersprachen’ (prostitute languages - an expression used by Nazi linguists), parasitic systems (Chomsky).”2Nowadays, this opinion Mühlhäusler criticized is nevertheless disproved and antiquated. TheEncyclopaedia Britannicaonce described Pidgin English as “an unruly bastard jargon, filled with nursery imbecilities, vulgarisms and corruptions”.3But it no longer uses such a definition. Recently, for example scholars recall that pidgins mirror human creative linguistic ability.4 Now this course work should deal with Hawaii Creole English, starting with a short definition of pidgin and creole languages and then turning to some background information about the Hawaiian Islands, which is quite important to understand the context of language developments. Afterwards, Hawaii Creole English5is examined with regard to consonants, vowels, intonation as well as phonology, grammar, semantics and pragmatics. Furthermore, it is compared with Hawaiian, the original language of Hawaii, and Hawaii Pidgin English. As a conclusion, one could summarize the use of studying pidgin and creole language with the help of a few new aspects, and briefly discuss the feature of decreolization in Hawaii, if there is some. The aim of this course work should be to evaluate the sociolinguistic approach of Hawaii with the linguistic facts of HCE, noting also the expansion of the language.

Devoted to a serious description of Pidgin origins and grammar, this work on Pidgin grammar does not require knowledge of linguistics. This reference is useful for anyone wanting to know more about this unique language of the Hawaiian Islands.

This volume offers a first survey of projects from around the world that seek to implement Creole languages in education. In contrast to previous works, this volume takes a holistic approach. Chapters discuss the sociolinguistic, educational and ideological context of projects, policy developments and project implementation, development and evaluation. It compares different kinds of educational activities focusing on Creoles and discusses a list of procedures that are necessary for successfully developing, evaluating and reforming educational activities that aim to integrate Creole languages in a viable and sustainable manner into formal education. The chapters are written by practitioners and academics involved in educational projects. They serve as a resource for practitioners, academics and persons wishing to devise or adapt educational initiatives. It is suitable for use in upper level undergraduate and post-graduate modules dealing with language and education with a focus on lesser used languages.