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80-456: Nihoa ( / n iː ˈ h oʊ . ə / ; Hawaiian : Nīhoa [niːˈhowə] or Hawaiian : Nihoa [niˈhowə] ), also known as Bird Island or Moku Manu , is the tallest of ten islands and atolls in the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI). The island is located at the southern end of the NWHI chain, 296 km (160 nmi) southeast of Necker Island . Nihoa

160-602: A USFWS -issued special-use permit to land on the island so as to reduce the risk of introducing alien species to Nihoa's already fragile ecosystem. Nihoa is part of the Hawaiian – Emperor seamount chain of volcanic islands, atolls, and seamounts starting from the island of Hawaiʻi in the southeast to the Aleutian Islands in the northwest. It is the youngest of ten islands in the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI), having formed 7.2 million years ago;

240-678: A Hawaiian language news broadcast. Honolulu television station KGMB ran a weekly Hawaiian language program, ʻĀhaʻi ʻŌlelo Ola , as recently as 2010. Additionally, the Sunday editions of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser , the largest newspaper in Hawaii, feature a brief article called Kauakukalahale written entirely in Hawaiian by teachers, students, and community members. Today, the number of native speakers of Hawaiian, which

320-440: A critically endangered language. However, informal coercion to drop Hawaiian would not have worked by itself. Just as important was the fact that, in the same period, native Hawaiians were becoming a minority in their own land on account of the growing influx of foreign labourers and their children. Whereas in 1890 pure Hawaiian students made 56% of school enrollment, in 1900 their numbers were down to 32% and, in 1910, to 16.9%. At

400-505: A grammar of Hawaiian in which he made it clear that the glottal stop (calling it "guttural break") is definitely a true consonant of the Hawaiian language. He wrote it using an apostrophe. In 1922, the Andrews-Parker dictionary of Hawaiian made limited use of the opening single quote symbol, then called "reversed apostrophe" or "inverse comma", to represent the glottal stop. Subsequent dictionaries and written material associated with

480-586: A hyphen or dash written above a vowel, i.e., ā ē ī ō ū and Ā Ē Ī Ō Ū . It is used to show that the marked vowel is a "double", or "geminate", or "long" vowel, in phonological terms. (See: Vowel length ) As early as 1821, at least one of the missionaries, Hiram Bingham , was using macrons (and breves ) in making handwritten transcriptions of Hawaiian vowels. The missionaries specifically requested their sponsor in Boston to send them some type (fonts) with accented vowel characters, including vowels with macrons, but

560-611: A major impact on the future of the language. He sailed to New England , where he eventually became a student at the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut . He inspired New Englanders to support a Christian mission to Hawaiʻi, and provided information on the Hawaiian language to the American missionaries there prior to their departure for Hawaiʻi in 1819. Adelbert von Chamisso too might have consulted with

640-521: A minor revision. The dictionary they produced, in 1957, introduced an era of gradual increase in attention to the language and culture. Language revitalization and Hawaiian culture has seen a major revival since the Hawaiian renaissance in the 1970s. Forming in 1983, the ʻAha Pūnana Leo , meaning "language nest" in Hawaiian, opened its first center in 1984. It was a privately funded Hawaiian preschool program that invited native Hawaiian elders to speak to children in Hawaiian every day. Efforts to promote

720-515: A native speaker of Hawaiian in Berlin, Germany , before publishing his grammar of Hawaiian ( Über die Hawaiische Sprache ) in 1837. Like all natural spoken languages, the Hawaiian language was originally an oral language. The native people of the Hawaiian language relayed religion, traditions, history, and views of their world through stories that were handed down from generation to generation. One form of storytelling most commonly associated with

800-492: A new phase in the development of Hawaiian. During the next forty years, the sounds of Spanish (1789), Russian (1804), French (1816), and German (1816) arrived in Hawaiʻi via other explorers and businessmen. Hawaiian began to be written for the first time, largely restricted to isolated names and words, and word lists collected by explorers and travelers. The early explorers and merchants who first brought European languages to

880-592: A significant role in publishing a vocabulary (1836), grammar (1854), and dictionary (1865) of Hawaiian. The Hawaiian Bible was fully completed in 1839; by then, the Mission had such a wide-reaching school network that, when in 1840 it handed it over to the Hawaiian government, the Hawaiian Legislature mandated compulsory state-funded education for all children under 14 years of age, including girls, twelve years before any similar compulsory education law

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960-494: A vowel. The Hawaiian alphabetical order has all of the vowels before the consonants, as in the following chart. This writing system was developed by American Protestant missionaries during 1820–1826. It was the first thing they ever printed in Hawaiʻi, on January 7, 1822, and it originally included the consonants B, D, R, T, and V, in addition to the current ones ( H, K, L, M, N, P, W ), and it had F, G, S, Y and Z for "spelling foreign words". The initial printing also showed

1040-619: A year later. The abandoned settlements seen by the early explorers caused Nihoa and Necker islands, to be called the 'mystery islands'. However, this term is used more generally to refer to any island in the Pacific that was similarly abandoned prior to European contact. By the end of the 18th century, Nihoa had been forgotten by most Hawaiians. In 1822, Queen Kaʻahumanu and her husband King Kaumualiʻi traveled with Captain William Sumner to find Nihoa, as her generation had only known

1120-493: Is Palakila , but retaining "foreign letters" it is Barazila . Another example is Gibraltar , written as Kipalaleka or Gibaraleta . While [z] and [ɡ] are not regarded as Hawaiian sounds, [b] , [ɹ] , and [t] were represented in the original alphabet, so the letters ( b , r , and t ) for the latter are not truly "non-Hawaiian" or "foreign", even though their post-1826 use in published matter generally marked words of foreign origin. ʻOkina ( ʻoki 'cut' + -na '-ing')

1200-468: Is a combination of charter, public, and private schools. K–6 schools operate under coordinated governance of the Department of Education and the charter school, while the pre-K–12 laboratory system is governed by the Department of Education, the ʻAha Pūnana Leo , and the charter school. Over 80% of graduates from these laboratory schools attend college, some of which include Ivy-League schools. Hawaiian

1280-445: Is a narrow cleft descending 700 feet (210 m) irrespective of the surrounding elevation. Extending northward from Albatross Plateau, it ends at the vertical cliffs with a 190-foot (60 m) drop straight down to the ocean below. In this chasm, rare ferns grow, along with several endemic species, including a giant cricket . The island is about 1371 meters long going from east to west, and 274–914 meters wide. The overall shape

1360-467: Is desired that another language shall be taught in addition to the English language, such instruction may be authorized by the Department, either by its rules, the curriculum of the school, or by direct order in any particular instance. Any schools that shall not conform to the provisions of this section shall not be recognized by the Department. This law established English as the medium of instruction for

1440-413: Is now an authorized course in the Department of Education language curriculum, though not all schools offer the language. There are two kinds of Hawaiian-immersion medium schools: K–12 total Hawaiian-immersion schools, and grades 7–12 partial Hawaiian immersion schools, the later having some classes are taught in English and others are taught in Hawaiian. One of the main focuses of Hawaiian-medium schools

1520-583: Is pronounced. Elbert & Pukui's Hawaiian Grammar says "The glottal stop, ‘, is made by closing the glottis or space between the vocal cords, the result being something like the hiatus in English oh-oh ." As early as 1823, the missionaries made some limited use of the apostrophe to represent the glottal stop, but they did not make it a letter of the alphabet. In publishing the Hawaiian Bible, they used it to distinguish koʻu ('my') from kou ('your'). In 1864, William DeWitt Alexander published

1600-447: Is that of half saddle, with one side having sheer cliffs and the other sloping towards the ocean. Nihoa's inaccessibility and lack of major guano deposits made the island unattractive to humans, helping to preserve its endemic species from extinction. Because of Nihoa's small size, most of its endemic organisms are endangered , as one single disaster, such as an island-wide fire or an introduction of invasive species , could wipe out

1680-434: Is the closest NWHI in proximity to the eight main windward Hawaiian Islands at approximately 240 km (130 nmi) northwest of the island of Kauaʻi . The island has two peaks, 272 m (892 ft) Miller's Peak in the west, and 259 m (850 ft) Tanager Peak in the east. Nihoa's area is about 171 acres (0.69 km) and is surrounded by a 142,000-acre (57,000 ha) coral reef . Its jagged outline gives

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1760-402: Is the modern Hawaiian name for the symbol (a letter) that represents the glottal stop . It was formerly known as ʻuʻina ("snap"). For examples of the ʻokina, consider the Hawaiian words Hawaiʻi and Oʻahu (often simply Hawaii and Oahu in English orthography). In Hawaiian, these words are pronounced [hʌˈʋʌi.ʔi] and [oˈʔʌ.hu] , and are written with an ʻokina where the glottal stop

1840-443: Is the most aberrant and the one most in need of study". They recognized that Niʻihauans can speak Hawaiian in substantially different ways. Their statements are based in part on some specific observations made by Newbrand (1951) . (See Hawaiian phonological processes ) Friction has developed between those on Niʻihau that speak Hawaiian as a first language, and those who speak Hawaiian as a second language, especially those educated by

1920-489: Is the only area in the world where Hawaiian is the first language and English is a foreign language. The isolated island of Niʻihau , located off the southwest coast of Kauai , is the one island where Hawaiian (more specifically a local dialect of Hawaiian known as Niihau dialect ) is still spoken as the language of daily life. Elbert & Pukui (1979 :23) states that "[v]ariations in Hawaiian dialects have not been systematically studied", and that "[t]he dialect of Niʻihau

2000-597: Is the only college in the United States of America that offers a master's and doctorate's degree in an Indigenous language. Programs offered at The Ka Haka ʻUla O Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian Language are known collectively as the "Hilo model" and has been imitated by the Cherokee immersion program and several other Indigenous revitalization programs. Since 1921, the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa and all of

2080-410: Is to teach the form and structure of the Hawaiian language by modeling sentences as a "pepeke", meaning squid in Hawaiian. In this case the pepeke is a metaphor that features the body of a squid with the three essential parts: the poʻo (head), the ʻawe (tentacles) and the piko (where the poʻo and ʻawe meet) representing how a sentence is structured. The poʻo represents the predicate, the piko representing

2160-616: The Austronesian language family that takes its name from Hawaiʻi , the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed . Hawaiian, along with English , is an official language of the US state of Hawaiʻi . King Kamehameha III established the first Hawaiian-language constitution in 1839 and 1840. In 1896, the Republic of Hawaii passed Act 57, an English-only law which subsequently banned Hawaiian language as

2240-729: The College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo . The university sponsors a Hawaiian Language Lexicon Committee ( Kōmike Huaʻōlelo Hou ) which coins words for concepts that historically have not existed in the language, like "computer" and "cell phone". These words are generally not incorporated into the Niʻihau dialect, which often coins its own words organically. Some new words are Hawaiianized versions of English words, and some are composed of Hawaiian roots and unrelated to English sounds. The Hawaiian medium education system

2320-749: The English-speaking world ). Why was pronounced [ʍai] . The spelling "hee" or "ee" in the name represents the sounds [hi] , or [i] . Putting the parts together, O-why-(h)ee reflects [o-hwai-i] , a reasonable approximation of the native pronunciation, [ʔo həwɐiʔi] . American missionaries bound for Hawaiʻi used the phrases "Owhihe Language" and "Owhyhee language" in Boston prior to their departure in October 1819 and during their five-month voyage to Hawaiʻi. They still used such phrases as late as March 1822. However, by July 1823, they had begun using

2400-669: The 1950s. English essentially displaced Hawaiian on six of seven inhabited islands. In 2001, native speakers of Hawaiian amounted to less than 0.1% of the statewide population. Linguists were unsure if Hawaiian and other endangered languages would survive. Nevertheless, from around 1949 to the present day, there has been a gradual increase in attention to and promotion of the language. Public Hawaiian-language immersion preschools called Pūnana Leo were established in 1984; other immersion schools followed soon after that. The first students to start in immersion preschool have now graduated from college and many are fluent Hawaiian speakers. However,

2480-442: The Hawaiian and Society Islands. Jack H. Ward (1962) conducted a study using basic words and short utterances to determine the level of comprehension between different Polynesian languages. The mutual intelligibility of Hawaiian was found to be 41.2% with Marquesan, 37.5% with Tahitian, 25.5% with Samoan and 6.4% with Tongan. In 1778, British explorer James Cook made Europe's initial, recorded first contact with Hawaiʻi, beginning

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2560-453: The Hawaiian islands also took on a few native crew members who brought the Hawaiian language into new territory. Hawaiians took these nautical jobs because their traditional way of life changed due to plantations, and although there were not enough of these Hawaiian-speaking explorers to establish any viable speech communities abroad, they still had a noticeable presence. One of them, a boy in his teens known as Obookiah ( ʻŌpūkahaʻia ), had

2640-546: The Hawaiian islands is hula . Nathaniel B. Emerson notes that "It kept the communal imagination in living touch with the nation's legendary past". The islanders' connection with their stories is argued to be one reason why Captain James Cook received a pleasant welcome. Marshall Sahlins has observed that Hawaiian folktales began bearing similar content to those of the Western world in the eighteenth century. He argues this

2720-471: The Hawaiian language revitalization have preferred to use this symbol, the ʻokina , to better represent spoken Hawaiian. Nonetheless, excluding the ʻokina may facilitate interface with English-oriented media, or even be preferred stylistically by some Hawaiian speakers, in homage to 19th century written texts. So there is variation today in the use of this symbol. The ʻokina is written in various ways for electronic uses: Because many people who want to write

2800-503: The Hawaiian language was accelerated by the coup that overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and dethroned the existing Hawaiian queen. Thereafter, a law was instituted that required English as the main language of school instruction. The law cited is identified as Act 57, sec. 30 of the 1896 Laws of the Republic of Hawaiʻi: The English Language shall be the medium and basis of instruction in all public and private schools, provided that where it

2880-401: The Hawaiian language). The island name was first written in English in 1778 by British explorer James Cook and his crew members. They wrote it as "Owhyhee" or "Owhyee". It is written "Oh-Why-hee" on the first map of Sandwich Islands engraved by Tobias Conrad Lotter  [ de ] in 1781. Explorers Mortimer (1791) and Otto von Kotzebue (1821) used that spelling. The initial "O" in

2960-499: The Tanager expedition they also found the remnants of a modern Fishing camp in a cave near the landing, with some leftover coats and bags of rice. 23°03′38″N 161°55′19″W  /  23.06056°N 161.92194°W  / 23.06056; -161.92194 Hawaiian language Hawaiian ( ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi , pronounced [ʔoːˈlɛlo həˈvɐjʔi] ) is a Polynesian language and critically endangered language of

3040-541: The University of Hawaiʻi Community Colleges also offer Hawaiian language courses to students for credit. The university now also offers free online courses not for credit, along with a few other websites and apps such as Duolingo . Hawaiians had no written language prior to Western contact, except for petroglyph symbols. The modern Hawaiian alphabet, ka pīʻāpā Hawaiʻi , is based on the Latin script . Hawaiian words end only in vowels, and every consonant must be followed by

3120-711: The archipelago in roughly 300 CE followed by later waves of immigration from the Society Islands and Samoa - Tonga . Their languages, over time, became the Hawaiian language within the Hawaiian Islands. Kimura and Wilson (1983) also state: Linguists agree that Hawaiian is closely related to Eastern Polynesian, with a particularly strong link in the Southern Marquesas, and a secondary link in Tahiti, which may be explained by voyaging between

3200-411: The creation of a standard spelling that should be as easy to master as possible. The orthography created by the missionaries was so straightforward that literacy spread very quickly among the adult population; at the same time, the Mission set more and more schools for children. In 1834, the first Hawaiian-language newspapers were published by missionaries working with locals. The missionaries also played

3280-438: The department. Hawaiian was not taught initially in any school, including the all-Hawaiian Kamehameha Schools . This is largely because when these schools were founded, like Kamehameha Schools founded in 1887 (nine years before this law), Hawaiian was being spoken in the home. Once this law was enacted, individuals at these institutions took it upon themselves to enforce a ban on Hawaiian. Beginning in 1900, Mary Kawena Pukui , who

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3360-585: The efforts of Hawaiian and immigrant parents to maintain their ancestral languages within the family. In 1949, the legislature of the Territory of Hawaiʻi commissioned Mary Pukui and Samuel Elbert to write a new dictionary of Hawaiian, either revising the Andrews-Parker work or starting from scratch. Pukui and Elbert took a middle course, using what they could from the Andrews dictionary, but making certain improvements and additions that were more significant than

3440-423: The exception of Niʻihau). Thus, even pure Hawaiian children would converse daily with their schoolmates of diverse mother tongues in English, which was now not just the teachers' language but also the common language needed for everyday communication among friends and neighbours out of school as well. In only a generation English (or rather Pidgin) would become the primary and dominant language of all children, despite

3520-557: The first archeological survey of the island. Evidence of an ancient settlement on Nihoa was discovered, along with platforms, terraces, and human remains. Noted events include finding a specimen of Amaranthus brownii and the discovery of the Nihoa millerbird which was formally named Acrocephalus familiaris kingi , On this expedition, several hundred Loulu fan palms were counted on the island. Twenty other flowering plants were also noted at this time. Examples of exploration work: On

3600-422: The five vowel letters ( A, E, I, O, U ) and seven of the short diphthongs ( AE, AI, AO, AU, EI, EU, OU ). In 1826, the developers voted to eliminate some of the letters which represented functionally redundant allophones (called "interchangeable letters"), enabling the Hawaiian alphabet to approach the ideal state of one-symbol-one- phoneme , and thereby optimizing the ease with which people could teach and learn

3680-448: The form common to other islands in the chain represented by a high stacked stone wall enclosing a central space. This difference in form represents an earlier iteration of Hawaiian monumental architecture that offers a unique perspective on cultural norms prior to the abandonment of Nihoa. Thanks to this difference in form, scholars often use the term ' marae ' as opposed to 'heiau' in reference to these structures and some scholars argue that

3760-534: The god Lono's return at the time of the Makahiki festival. In 1820, Protestant missionaries from New England arrived in Hawaiʻi, and in a few years converted the chiefs to Congregational Protestantism, who in turn converted their subjects. To the missionaries, the thorough Christianization of the kingdom necessitated a complete translation of the Bible to Hawaiian, a previously unwritten language, and therefore

3840-416: The government-recognized schools both "public and private". While it did not ban or make illegal the Hawaiian language in other contexts, its implementation in the schools had far-reaching effects. Those who had been pushing for English-only schools took this law as licence to extinguish the native language at the early education level. While the law did not make Hawaiian illegal (it was still commonly spoken at

3920-464: The high volcanic Hawaiian islands, and receives the lowest dust and tephra input. All of these features were found to strongly predict deforestation among the Pacific Islands . The abandonment of Nihoa may be tied to deforestation although this has not been proven and small groves of trees were noted in the major drainage valleys during survey work conducted in 1928. Artifacts recorded on

4000-854: The island in 1923, taking a comprehensive biological inventory of its many species. In 1940, it became part of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Wildlife Refuge and in 1988, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places due to its culturally significant archaeological sites. In 2006, it became part of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument . Efforts are underway to ensure that endangered plant species are propagated beyond their limited range and represented in ex situ collections. Persons intending to visit Nihoa for cultural and scientific research purposes require

4080-399: The island its name, Nīhoa , which is Hawaiian for "toothed, serrated". The island is home to 25 species of plants and several animals, making it the most diverse island in the entire NWHI. Endemic birds like the Nihoa finch and Nihoa millerbird , and endemic plants like Pritchardia remota and Schiedea verticillata are found only on Nihoa. Amaranthus brownii was considered

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4160-502: The island represent a unique material culture demonstrating restraint in the utilization of wood. A number of artifact types such as bowls and human figures called ki'i that elsewhere in the Hawaiian chain would have been made out of wood were instead carved from stone, a lengthy and labor-intensive process. Archaeological sites on the island are similar to other site types within the Hawaiian islands and include both packed dirt and stone terraces likely for habitation and agricultural uses on

4240-505: The island through songs and myths . Later, King Kamehameha IV sailed there to officially annex the island as part of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi . Finally, in 1885, Princess Liliuokalani made a pilgrimage to Nihoa with her escorts, but their luncheon was cut short when one of the party ignited a wildfire by accident. The group tried to flee the island, but the rising tides made it difficult and several boats were flooded, destroying some of

4320-550: The island were previously forested, this would have increased fresh water supplies relative to its current state. Because of the island's importance, the island was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988, and subsequently became part of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in June 2006. Nihoa, along with Necker Island to the northwest, is among the most northern, isolated, smallest and driest of

4400-665: The island's cliffs are mostly bare, but the sloping valleys are covered with a variety of grasses and shrubs. The two most common grasses on these slopes are Eragrosis Varabilis and Panicum torridum . There is also a variety of scrubs and bushes on the island slopes, such as Chenopodium sandwicheum and ilima bushes ( Sida fallax ). Unique species include: The island forms part of the Northwest Hawaiian Islands Important Bird Area (IBA), designated as such by BirdLife International because of its seabirds and endemic landbirds. Nihoa

4480-460: The language have increased in recent decades. Hawaiian-language "immersion" schools are now open to children whose families want to reintroduce the Hawaiian language for future generations. The ʻAha Pūnana Leo 's Hawaiian language preschools in Hilo, Hawaii , have received international recognition. The local National Public Radio station features a short segment titled "Hawaiian word of the day" and

4560-471: The language is still classified as critically endangered by UNESCO. A creole language , Hawaiian Pidgin (or Hawaii Creole English, HCE), is more commonly spoken in Hawaiʻi than Hawaiian. Some linguists, as well as many locals, argue that Hawaiian Pidgin is a dialect of American English. Born from the increase of immigrants from Japan, China, Puerto Rico, Korea, Portugal, Spain and the Philippines,

4640-489: The language was "soon destined to extinction." When Hawaiian King David Kalākaua took a trip around the world, he brought his native language with him. When his wife, Queen Kapiʻolani , and his sister, Princess (later Queen) Liliʻuokalani , took a trip across North America and on to the British Islands, in 1887, Liliʻuokalani's composition " Aloha ʻOe " was already a famous song in the U.S. The decline of

4720-583: The location of Nihoa was mostly forgotten, with only an oral legend preserving its name. Captain James Colnett rediscovered the island in 1788, and Queen Kaʻahumanu visited it in 1822. It was made part of the Kingdom of Hawaii by King Kamehameha IV . In 1909, Nihoa became part of the Hawaiian Islands Reservation, a federal wildlife refuge established by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt . The Tanager Expedition surveyed

4800-453: The medium on instruction from publicly funded schools and promoted strict physical punishment for children caught speaking the Hawaiian language in schools. The Hawaiian language was not again allowed to be used as a medium of instruction in Hawai’i’s public schools until 1987, a span of 91 years. The number of native speakers of Hawaiian gradually decreased during the period from the 1830s to

4880-474: The name "Oh-Why-hee" is a reflection of the fact that Hawaiian predicates unique identity by using a copula form, ʻo , immediately before a proper noun. Thus, in Hawaiian, the name of the island is expressed by saying ʻO Hawaiʻi , which means "[This] is Hawaiʻi." The Cook expedition also wrote "Otaheite" rather than "Tahiti". The spelling "why" in the name reflects the [ ʍ ] pronunciation of wh in 18th-century English (still used in parts of

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4960-503: The oldest, Kure Atoll , formed 30 million years ago. Over the millennia, Nihoa has experienced significant erosion ; along with Necker, French Frigate Shoals, and Gardner Pinnacles, Nihoa is one of only four islands in the NWHI that still has an exposed basalt rock substrate. Six valleys slant down from north to south, meeting at the south side of the island: West Valley, West Palm Valley, Miller Valley, Middle Valley, East Palm Valley, and East Valley. The valleys slant towards Adam's bay on

5040-464: The photographs taken. On this visit a carved basalt bowl was found and taken back to the main islands by the Queen. In 1859 the position of Nihoa island was determined by the survey schooner, USS Fenimore Cooper . During 1923-4 the Tanager expedition was a noted scientific exploration of Nihoa island. This resulted in various biological and archeological discoveries. The Tanager expedition conducted

5120-482: The phrase "Hawaiian Language". In Hawaiian, the language is called ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi , since adjectives follow nouns. Hawaiian is a Polynesian member of the Austronesian language family . It is closely related to other Polynesian languages , such as Samoan , Marquesan , Tahitian , Māori , Rapa Nui (the language of Easter Island ) and Tongan . According to Schütz (1994), the Marquesans colonized

5200-415: The pidgin creole language was a necessity in the plantations. Hawaiian and immigrant laborers as well as the luna , or overseers, found a way to communicate among themselves. Pidgin eventually made its way off the plantation and into the greater community, where it is still used to this day. The Hawaiian language takes its name from the largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago, Hawaii ( Hawaiʻi in

5280-419: The rarest plant on Nihoa and has not been directly observed on the island since 1983, and is now considered to be extinct. The plant communities and rocky outcrops provide nesting and perching areas for 18 species of seabirds, such as red-footed boobies and brown noddies , terns, shearwaters, and petrels. Prehistoric evidence indicates Native Hawaiians lived on or visited the island around AD 1000, but over time

5360-513: The reading and writing of Hawaiian. For example, instead of spelling one and the same word as pule, bule, pure, and bure (because of interchangeable p/b and l/r ), the word is spelled only as pule . However, hundreds of words were very rapidly borrowed into Hawaiian from English, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Syriac. Although these loan words were necessarily Hawaiianized , they often retained some of their "non-Hawaiian letters" in their published forms. For example, Brazil fully Hawaiianized

5440-459: The same time, Hawaiians were very prone to intermarriage: the number of "Part-Hawaiian" students (i.e., children of mixed White-Hawaiian marriages) grew from 1573 in 1890 to 3718 in 1910. In such mixed households, the low prestige of Hawaiian led to the adoption of English as the family language. Moreover, Hawaiians lived mostly in the cities or scattered across the countryside, in direct contact with other ethnic groups and without any stronghold (with

5520-727: The shift in form represents a shift in ritual practice in Hawaii. The first Westerner to discover Nihoa was Captain James Colnett of the Prince of Wales , on March 21, 1788. Due to Colnett's lengthy absence from England, including his imprisonment by the Spanish for his part in the Nootka Sound Incident , the discovery was once widely accredited to Captain William Douglas of the Iphigenia , who sighted Nihoa almost

5600-399: The south side, which also has sea cave. Among features on Nihoa are Dog's Head Peak (358 ft or 109 m), named for its likeness, and Pinnacle Peak (626 ft or 191 m), a volcanic dike created when less resilient rock was eroded away and harder rock was open to the elements. The only flat area on the island is Albatross Plateau, just below Miller's Peak. The Devil's Slide

5680-402: The steep slopes of the island, cave shelters, and heiau . Some scholars consider Nihoa to be a matched pair with Necker Island although the latter appears not to have had a permanent population. The heiau on Nihoa and Necker Islands are unique in the Hawaiian chain representing a raised pavement of basalt stones with upright stones placed across this pavement often near the edges as opposed to

5760-589: The subject and the ʻawe representing the object. Hawaiian immersion schools teach content that both adheres to state standards and stresses Hawaiian culture and values. The existence of immersion schools in Hawaiʻi has developed the opportunity for intergenerational transmission of Hawaiian at home. The Ka Haka ʻUla O Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian Language is a college at the University of Hawaii at Hilo dedicated to providing courses and programs entirely in Hawaiian. It educates and provides training for teachers and school administrators of Hawaiian medium schools. It

5840-419: The time), many children who spoke Hawaiian at school, including on the playground, were disciplined. This included corporal punishment and going to the home of the offending child to advise them strongly to stop speaking it in their home. Moreover, the law specifically provided for teaching languages "in addition to the English language", reducing Hawaiian to the status of an extra language, subject to approval by

5920-439: The whole population. One such invasive species is the gray bird grasshopper , Schistocerca nitens ; from the period between 1999 and 2003, grasshoppers devastated much of the vegetation on the island and posed a real threat to the continued health of plants on Nihoa. The following year, the numbers decreased and the vegetation became lush again. The grasshoppers probably came to Nihoa by way of wind from Kauai . The north side of

6000-434: The ʻokina are not familiar with these specific characters and/or do not have access to the appropriate fonts and input and display systems, it is sometimes written with more familiar and readily available characters: A modern Hawaiian name for the macron symbol is kahakō ( kaha 'mark' + kō 'long'). It was formerly known as mekona (Hawaiianization of macron ). It can be written as a diacritical mark which looks like

6080-507: Was caused by the timing of Captain Cook's arrival, which was coincidentally when the indigenous Hawaiians were celebrating the Makahiki festival , which is the annual celebration of the harvest in honor of the god Lono . The celebration lasts for the entirety of the rainy season . It is a time of peace with much emphasis on amusements, food, games, and dancing. The islanders' story foretold of

6160-557: Was enacted for the first time in any of the United States. Literacy in Hawaiian was so widespread that in 1842 a law mandated that people born after 1819 had to be literate to be allowed to marry. In his Report to the Legislature for the year 1853 Richard Armstrong , the minister of Public Instruction, bragged that 75% of the adult population could read. Use of the language among the general population might have peaked around 1881. Even so, some people worried, as early as 1854, that

6240-473: Was later the co-author of the Hawaiian–English Dictionary, was punished for speaking Hawaiian by being rapped on the forehead, allowed to eat only bread and water for lunch, and denied home visits on holidays. Winona Beamer was expelled from Kamehameha Schools in 1937 for chanting Hawaiian. Due in part to this systemic suppression of the language after the overthrow, Hawaiian is still considered

6320-447: Was under 0.1% of the statewide population in 1997, has risen to 2,000, out of 24,000 total who are fluent in the language, according to the US 2011 census. On six of the seven permanently inhabited islands, Hawaiian has been largely displaced by English, but on Niʻihau , native speakers of Hawaiian have remained fairly isolated and have continued to use Hawaiian almost exclusively. Niʻihau

6400-525: Was well known to the early Hawaiians . Archaeological expeditions found extensive prehistoric agricultural terraces and house sites. At least one site has been dated to around the 1st millennium AD, sometime between 867 and 1037. There is some doubt as to the number of people that lived on Nihoa, because while the large terraces suggest a considerable number, there is scant fresh water to be found. Archaeologists Kenneth Emory and Paul Cleghorn estimate that water could support as many as 100 people, although if

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