Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke ‘elikōlani : University of Hawaii’s College of Hawaiian Language (M4-4)

http://www.olelo.hawaii.edu/

Home to one of the most renowned and successful language revitalization programs in the world, the University of Hawaii Hilo’s College of Hawaiian Language website is an excellent place to start to research Hawaiian language or language revitalization.  As the website proclaims, the College has two divisions, the Studies and Academic Divisions; the Studies Division is where students learn and learn in the Hawaiian language, and the Academic Division is devoted to linguistic and cultural research.

Of interest on this page is the fact that it is a completely bilingual (Hawaiian and English) or monolingual (Hawaiian only) page, and upon arriving, one will notice that English is not the dominant language.  This is living evidence that language revitalization can be successful in many ways.  The second thing to note is the page on the Indigenous Teacher Education Mission.  The University is seeking out Hawaiian people with a strong language and cultural background to be trained as teachers for the many immersion schools in Hawaii.

Overall, this is an informative, general information site about a culture that is making use of technology to enhance the language revitalization process. (If you would like more information on the history of their tech-based language revitalization program, read Mark Warschauer’s work, in particular:

Warschauer, M. & Donaghy, K. (1997). Leokï: A powerful voice of Hawaiian language revitalization. Computer Assisted Language Learning 10(4), pp.349-361.