He Aupuni Palapala project at Bishop Museum, 2021.

Did you see the latest Nūhou Monday post from Bishop Museum? It mentions Ka Nūhou, the Hawaiian language newsletter put out by the club, Hui Aloha ʻĀina Tuahine at University of Hawaii at Mānoa. That was 49 years ago! Click here for the Nūhou Monday post from He Aupuni Palapala!

E na makua Hawaiʻi me na kupuna Hawaiʻi

…ʻO ʻoukou no na kumu helu ekahi o ka ʻolelo Hawaiʻi. Ka ʻolelo i aʻo ʻia mai ka puke mai, oʻohe no e like me ka ʻolelo mai koʻoukou waha mai.

Hawaiian parents and grandparents, you are the best teachers of the Hawaiian language.
The language taught from books is not like the language that comes from your mouths.
—A plea written by Haunani Bernardino, editor of Ka Nuhou, an English-Hawaiian newsletter.

Haunani Bernardino

Nuulani Atkins

Lurline Naone

Bill Wilson

By Arlene Lum
Star-Bulletinn Writer

Hawaiian is a living language and NOT a foreign one. And if a group of University of Hawaii students had their way, Hawaiian youngsters would be bilingual.

There are only 5,000 people in the State now who can speak the beautiful, musical language and only 150 at the University are trying to learn.

The reason?

“We were brought up feeling ashamed of our heritage,” according to Nuulani Atkins, a senior in his third year of language study. “I hated myself. I hated the Hawaiians. I felt inferior.” Continue reading

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Ka Leo Hawaii, 1972 / 2016.

A labor of love

When Larry Kimura and his students first arrived at KCCN in Honolulu with a pitch for a new Hawaiian-language radio show, the station manager had one question.

“Do you have an audience?”

It was 1972. Hawaiian was dying out. Most native speakers were kupuna — and there were not many left. It was still technically illegal to speak Hawaiian in schools. Who was going to listen to a program conducted entirely in Hawaiian?

“But he was kind enough to say, ‘All right,’” Kimura, now 69 and an associate professor of Hawaiian language and culture at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, recalled last week. Continue reading at Hawaii Tribune Herald

[Check out this awesome article from the Hawaii Tribune Herald. I wonder who the station manager of KCCN was in 1972!]