iSpeak Hawaiian

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Researcher says Hawaiian language key to Hawaiian self-esteem

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August 14, 2006 07:38 PM PDT

Honolulu Advertiser
Published: 10/18/96

ʻŌlelo au i ka ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi. or ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi au.
(I speak Hawaiian).

Being able to say those words could mean the difference between a Hawaiian comfortable with his or her ethnic identity and a Hawaiian with less self-esteem, as Kiaka (Ki-a-ka) Gaughen found when researching his master's degree thesis at the University of Hawaiʻi.

"(Research) revealed that Hawaiians who participate in a Hawaiian-language course had a significant increase in self-esteem compared to those Hawaiian students that were not taking Hawaiian-language courses," said Gaughen, a Hawaiian.

To help determine "how experiences through people's lives have created a person," Gaughen created an identity development scale specifically for Hawaiians. He took a group of Hawaiian-language students beginning their studies and later compared them to Hawaiians who had no exposure to the language. He found a connection that he feels establishes a person's language as one piece of a puzzle in their development.

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Podcast Summary

The iSpeak Hawaiian podcast is for Hawaiians, local businesses including the local broadcast and recording industries and for anyone who is truly interested in the Hawaiian culture and its mother tongue, ka ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, the Hawaiian language.

ʻŌlelo Ala Nuʻukia (Mission)

To use the medium of podcasting to reach a worldwide audience providing a strong introductory foundation into the language, to help boost confidence and self-esteem ultimately fostering cultural pride and identity, to help raise awareness and sensitivity by ensuring proper usage of the language creating economic viability, and to support the building of a critical mass of at least 100,000 speakers, which is key in order for the language to successfully pass from one generation to the next.

Hoʻohana ʻia ka ʻōlelo aloha i haku ʻia e Holo H.