Language Trainers Blog

A team of researchers from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa are working to record and revive the dying language of Hawai’ian Sign Language.

They have located and identified 40 users of the language over four of the islands, most of whom are over 70.

James Woodward, a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawai’i, says

What we find with Hawai’i Sign Language is that 80% of this basic vocabulary list is different.  It means it cannot in any way be related to American Sign Language.

Hawai’ian Sign Language is believed to have originated in the 1800′s, long before American Sign Language. These are now the only two surviving sign  languages in the United States.

The team are documenting Hawai’ian Sign Language with instructional videos, illustrating the distinct differences between Hawai’i Sign Language and American Sign Language. They hope that the older generation of HSL users will be able to teach younger deaf students to sign and keep the language alive.

If, like me, you’re learning Spanish, then you might want to consider adding this puzzle book to your Christmas list. Wordsearches and crosswords are a great way to test your vocabulary skills. I use crosswords to practise my native English too!

This one is available from Waterstones. If you’re learning a different language, no worries…others are available in Italian, German, French, Swahili, Hindi, Japanese, Pashto, and even Hawaiian!

…and you could only take one word with you, what word would it be?

Obviously this is a ridiculous, hypothetical situation, but we’ve all seen The Little Mermaid, right?  What if she’d been given a single word that she could say to Prince Eric?

In English, all of our salutation words and phrases are different.  Hello, hi, good morning, how are you, fine, goodbye, bye, toodle-oo.

In more than a few other languages, the same word can be used for both ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’.  In French, it is ‘salut‘; in Thai it is ‘sawasdee‘; and in Italian it is ‘ciao‘.

Similarly, in French you can use ‘ça va‘ to mean both ‘how are you?’ (informal) and ‘fine’ (or, ‘it goes’).

In Laos and Hawaii, there are even more flexible words.  ‘Sabai di‘ (Lao) and ‘aloha‘ (Hawaiian) can be used to mean ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’, ‘welcome’, ‘fine’ (in response to ‘how are you?’), and many other things.  It’s difficult to establish exactly how many ways they can be used by their local people.

Adding in a question syllable (‘baw‘), an entire conversation can be carried out in Laos thus:

A: Sabai di! (Hello!)
B: Sabai di! (Hello!)
A: Sabai di baw? (How are you?)
B: Sabai di. Sabai di baw? (Fine. How are you?)
B: Sabai di! (Fine!)

Added to this, both the Lao and the Hawaiian peoples are renowned for their friendly nature and hospitality, so maybe they’re onto something.

Perhaps, given the awful hypothetical choice, I’d pick ‘aloha’!