This may sound silly, but... don't you speak Hawaiian? O_o Or at least understand some of it? Sorry, it's probably presumptuous as hell, but when one come from a multilingual culture where almost everyone speaks between 3 and 5 languages, one kind of assumes that everybody else that comes from a place where there's more than one major language does too. :-\
Nope, Hawaiian is very rare to hear–I wouldn’t even say it’s a major language in Hawaii (official, yes. Major, no). Sure, everyone knows a few words and phrases, maybe some songs, and some of the state monuments, etc have plaques in Hawaiian and English, but you never hear it in the street, day-to-day. Like, I can pronounce the words if I’m reading it, but completely not understand it. I have absolutely no idea what the grammar structure is like. The only place I’ve heard of it being spoken fluently is in some charter schools and amongst some Native Hawaiian families. It’s extremely sad! My high school offered it as a language credit, but very few people took it because universities on the mainland don’t accept it as a foreign language. I think Hawaiian is taught in public schools, but when are the kids ever going to use it?
I mean, disclaimer, I’m from Oahu and not Native Hawaiian so I can’t speak to how much it’s spoken on other islands and in other families but this is my experience. I expect there are more native speakers on Ni’ihau, since that island is reserved only for Native Hawaiians.
(Why are there so few native speakers? Well, once the US annexed Hawaii in the late 1800s, they banned the language from government and schools, and it wasn’t made an official language again until the late 1970s. That is a lot of time for native speakers to diminish–Hawaii is, after all, a very small place. I don’t think it helps that more and more, Hawaii is catering itself to tourists rather than locals, and the rest of the US would rather see it as a vacation spot than care about preserving its culture, language, or rich history so. Yeah.)
(I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to go on a rant)
