How many people still speak Hawaiian?
When Pacific explorer James Cook arrived on Hawaiian shores in 1778, there were an estimated 300,000-400,000 native speakers. According to 1990 U.S. Census statistics, less than 9,000 Hawaiians speak their indigenous tongue today. Why has there been such a drastic decline? Let’s take a brief look at our 50th state’s fascinating past to find the answer. The Hawaiian language, which is similar to Tahitian and Maori, is a young branch in the Polynesian family tree. Until American missionaries created a 13-letter alphabet for the strictly oral language in the 1820s, petroglyphs and hul
