The comeback of a Pacific language
In 1896, a law in Hawaii made English the only language allowed in schools. Children who spoke Hawaiian in class could be punished, and in a few generations the number of young speakers fell dramatically. By the early 1980s, only a very small number of children spoke the language.
Then families and teachers decided to act. They opened preschools where children learned everything in Hawaiian, and later the project expanded to primary and secondary schools. Today, thousands of students study in Hawaiian, and the language can be heard on the radio, in songs and on social media. 'We didn't want our language to live only in museums,' said one of the first teachers in the program. The road is still long, but the language is breathing again.
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