Census shows English is second language for 27 percent in Hawai'i
| • | Table: Language spoken at home |
By Christie Wilson
Advertiser Neighbor Island Editor
Ella Garlits is something of a rarity in Hawai'i. She is among only 58 people in the state who speak Navajo at home.
Garlits, 43, of Wheeler Army Airfield in Wahiawa, grew up on a New Mexico reservation and didn't begin to learn English until she started school at age 6. Although she is now fluent in English, she wants to make sure her daughters, Sarah, 10, and Lydia, 7, are connected to their Native American heritage through language.
Hawai'i ranks fifth in the United States in terms of percentage of non-English speakers, behind California, New Mexico, Texas and New York.
Pacific Island languao their Native American heritage through language.
Navajo is one of more than 30 languages spokHawai'i ranks fifth in the United States in terms of percentage of non-English speakers, behind California, New Mexico, Texas and New York.
Pacific Island languages, which are lumped into a single category by the census, is the top non-English language category spoken in Hawai'i homes, followed by Tagalog, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and Korean.
Eight percent of Hawai'i residents age 5 and older — about 90,111 individuals — speak Pacific Island languages at home, including Samoan, Tongan, Hawaiian and the languages of Micronesia. Tagalog, a Filipino language, is spoken by 60,967 individuals at home, or 5.4 percent of the population age 5 and older. Ilocano, another common Filipino language, was not given a separate category by the census.
Japanese is preferred at home by 56,225 individuals, or 5 percent of the population. Vietnamese ranks seventh and German eighth overall.
Along with Navajo, some of the more obscure languages in the Islands are Yiddish (41 individuals); Miao/Hmong, a language spoken in areas of China and Southeast Asia, (30); and Gujarathi (27) from India.
The census did not provide a separate number for Hawaiian speakers, but it's likely they make up only a small portion of the 90,111 in the Pacific Island languages category.
Kalena Silva, head of Ka Haka 'Ula O Ke'elikolani (College of Hawaiian Language) at the University of Hawai'i-Hilo, says Hawaiian and Maori are the two most endangered Polynesian languages. There are only about 500 native speakers who grew up with the Hawaiian language, he said, and most originate from the Ni'ihau community.
A larger number has become fluent in Hawaiian as a result of efforts in the past 20 to 30 years to preserve and restore the Hawaiian culture.
Last year 1,612 students were enrolled in the Department of Education's Hawaiian immersion program, and Silva said there are about 220 children at the 11 Punana Leo preschools in the state. Another 1,000 to 2,000 have become fluent by taking classes in college or through other programs, he said.
"A good conservative estimate is about 5,000, but the whole demographic have changed. Almost all the speakers are under 50," Silva said. There are an estimated 240,000 people of Hawaiian descent in the Islands.
Even with a resurgence in Hawaiian speakers, he said there are very few homes in which Hawaiian is the predominant language. Silva said he knows of only four such families in Hilo, and in all four cases English was their first language.
More commonly, English is the second language for those who make up the 27 percent of the population who speak another language at home. One official who works with immigrants said attitudes have changed about the necessity to learn English.
"It's not like the old days when everybody wanted to become a U.S. citizen. By and large, unless it becomes a necessity for employment or to seek medical care, nobody steps forward who really wants to take language classes. There's no strong motivation," said Iokepa Campton, program manager at Pacific Gateway Center, formerly known as the Immigrant Center.
Because many immigrant groups have become well-established here, new arrivals can feel at home right away and find employment within their community without learning English, he said. "Immigrants go into their own community and they feel more secure. They never have to learn the language," Campton said.
That's not to say English-as-a-second-language classes aren't in demand, he added, particularly among young people who may find themselves isolated in their own ethnic groups. But often, Campton has to do the recruiting himself or through other groups that deal with immigrants.
As might be expected, the census showed that a smaller percentage of children speak a non-English language at home compared with adults. Of the 302,126 people age 5 and older who speak another language at home, only 13 percent are under 18.
Of the nearly 40,000 children who don't speak English at home, more than 40 percent speak a Pacific Island language.
The DOE reported that last year, Filipino, Samoan and Marshallese children made up the largest segments of its English-as-a-second-language program.
Ella Garlits' two daughters are more fluent in English than they are in Navajo, and her husband, David, is Caucasian and has picked up a little bit of the language. When she marked the census box indicating that Navajo is the language spoken at home, Garlits likely was expressing optimism that her native tongue would be perpetuated by her family's youngest generation.
"My mother didn't know any English, and my dad knew only a little. My grandparents didn't speak any English at all," she said. "This past summer at home we spoke a lot of Navajo and I've been telling my girls stories and translating for them. I hope they grow up speaking Navajo. I want to keep the language alive."
The Garlitses bilingual existence is about to get more complicated, as they prepare to move to Germany next year. Now, in addition to Navajo and English, the family is trying to learn German.
The census numbers released last week were collected from a 1-in-6 sample and weighted to represent the total population.
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