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The Hawaiian language (Hawaiian: ', ) is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii. King Kamehameha III established the first Hawaiian-language constitution in 1839 and 1840. For various reasons, including territorial legislation establishing English as the official language in schools, the number of native speakers of Hawaiian gradually decreased during the period from the 1830s to the 1950s. Hawaiian was essentially displaced by English on six of seven inhabited islands. In 2001, native speakers of Hawaiian amounted to under 0.1% of the statewide population. Linguists are worried about the fate of this and other endangered languages.〔see e.g. 〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/hawaii-petition/ )〕 Nevertheless, from circa 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 started in 1984; other immersion schools followed soon after. The first students to start in immersion preschool have now graduated from college and many are fluent Hawaiian speakers. The federal government has acknowledged this development. For example, the Hawaiian National Park Language Correction Act of 2000 changed the names of several national parks in Hawaii, observing the Hawaiian spelling.〔(Hawaiian National Park Language Correction Act of 2000 (S.939) )〕 A pidgin or creole language spoken in Hawaii is Hawaiian Pidgin (or Hawaii Creole English, HCE). It should not be mistaken for the Hawaiian language nor for a dialect of English. The Hawaiian alphabet has 13 letters: five vowels (long and short) and eight consonants, one of them being a glottal stop (called ' in Hawaiian). ==Name== The Hawaiian language takes its name from the largest island, Hawaii (''Hawaii'' in the Hawaiian language), in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed, originally from a Polynesian language of the South Pacific, most likely Marquesan or Tahitian. 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". Explorers Mortimer (1791) and Otto von Kotzebue (1821) used that spelling. The initial "O" in the name is a reflection of the fact that unique identity is predicated in Hawaiian by using a copula form, ''o'', immediately before a proper noun. Thus, in Hawaiian, the name of the island is expressed by saying ''O Hawaii'', which means "() is Hawaii." The Cook expedition also wrote "Otaheite" rather than "Tahiti." The spelling "why" in the name reflects the pronunciation of ''wh'' in 18th-century English (still in active use in parts of the English-speaking world). ''Why'' was pronounced . The spelling "hee" or "ee" in the name represents the sounds , or . Putting the parts together, ''O-why-(h)ee'' reflects , a reasonable approximation of the native pronunciation, . American missionaries bound for Hawaii used the phrases "Owhihe Language" and "Owhyhee language" in Boston prior to their departure in October 1819 and during their five-month voyage to Hawai'i. They still used such phrases as late as March 1822. However, by July 1823, they had begun using the phrase "Hawaiian Language." In Hawaiian, ''Ōlelo Hawaii'' means "Hawaiian language", as adjectives follow nouns. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hawaiian language」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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