…the only state that has given its native language “official language” status.

Amidst the debate about the role of Spanish in the US, many people don’t realize that one state already has two official languages.

Can you name it?

I’ll give you a big hint – it’s a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Yes indeed, Hawaii has two official languages: English, of course, and Hawaiian, which is the area’s indigenous language.

A recent article from the Honolulu Civil Beat explains controversy stirred up by the language versions of the educational testing materials used for the state’s Hawaiian-speaking students. In the state’s Hawaiian Language Immersion Program, students are often taught in Hawaiian, but tested in English.

The logical solution would be to test these students in Hawaiian. However, when this idea was implemented, “third- and fourth-graders began taking a Hawaiian translation of the same online Hawaii State Assessment their mainstream peers were taking in English. The translated assessment was riddled with problems though, from technical errors and mistranslations to inaccuracies and test items displaying improperly on students' computer monitors.”

While Hawaiian schools are challenged by this problem, the state’s educational system must be recognized for making efforts to save the Hawaiian language. In the second half of the 20^th century, the language was in danger of dying out. Hawaiian-language immersion pre-schools were thus started in 1984, and other immersion schools have followed.

The original immersion pre-schoolers have now graduated from college and many are fluent Hawaiian speakers, leaving some hope for the future of the language.

Betty Carlson

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