Editing Hawaiian language (section)

===Suppression of Hawaiian===
The decline of 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.<ref name=":1" /> The law cited is identified as Act 57, sec. 30 of the 1896 Laws of the Republic of Hawai{{okina}}i:

{{blockquote|text=The English Language shall be the medium and basis of instruction in all public and private schools, provided that where it 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.|source=The Laws of Hawaii, Chapter 10, Section 123<ref name="Congress 1898 p. 1-PA23">{{cite book | last=Congress | first=United States. | title=Congressional Edition | publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office | issue=v. 3727 | year=1898 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VSxHAQAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PA23 | access-date=2017-07-20 | page=1–PA23}}</ref>}}

This law established English as the medium of instruction for 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 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.<ref>{{Cite book|last=United States. Native Hawaiians Study Commission.|url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/10865978|title=Native Hawaiians Study Commission : report on the culture, needs, and concerns of native Hawaiians.|publisher=[U.S. Dept. of the Interior]|year=1983|pages=196/213|oclc=10865978}}</ref> 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 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 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.<ref>Mary Kawena Pukui, ''Nana i ke Kumu, Vol. 2'' p. 61–62</ref> [[Winona Beamer]] was expelled from Kamehameha Schools in 1937 for chanting Hawaiian.<ref>M. J. Harden, ''Voices of Wisdom: Hawaiian Elders Speak,'' p. 99</ref> Due in part to this systemic suppression of the language after the overthrow, Hawaiian is still considered a critically endangered language.

[[File:Student nationality Hawaii 1890-1920.svg|thumb|National origin of students in the schools of Hawaii (1890–1920)]]
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%.<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|last=Reinecke, John E.|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/17917779|title=Language and dialect in Hawaii : a sociolinguistic history to 1935|year=1988 |orig-year= 1969|publisher=University of Hawaii Press|others=Tsuzaki, Stanley M.|isbn=0-8248-1209-3|location=Honolulu|pages=74–76|oclc=17917779}}</ref> At 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.<ref name=":4" /> 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 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 the efforts of Hawaiian and immigrant parents to maintain their ancestral languages within the family.