Hawaii Sign Language found to be distinct language

Researchers will formally announce their findings this weekend showing it's not a dialect of American Sign Language, as many long believed, but an unrelated language with unique vocabulary and grammar.

Only about 40 people, most in their 80s, are known to currently use Hawaii Sign Language, meaning the discovery comes just as the language is on the cusp of disappearing.

"I think that everyone in the room is aware of how Hawaiian, the indigenous language of this state, has been brought back from the brink of extinction," William O'Grady, linguistics professor at the University of Hawaii, said at a news conference. "But what we didn't know until very recently is that Hawaii is home to a second highly endangered language that is found nowhere else in the world."

Researchers said they interviewed and videotaped 21 users of Hawaii Sign Language — 19 elderly deaf people and two adult children of deaf parents — for their study.

They documented how Hawaii and American sign languages have different grammar. In Hawaii Sign Language, adjectives come after nouns, like "dog black" instead of "black dog" in American Sign Language.

They found words for father, mother, dog and pig are all different in Hawaii and American sign languages. In fact, only 20 words on a list of 100 key words are significantly similar in both languages.

"It's clearly a separate language and it clearly developed independently," said James Woodward, a University of Hawaii, Manoa, linguistics adjunct professor and co-director of the Center for Sign Linguistics and Deaf Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Languages are considered dialects when they share more than 80 percent of the words on the list, said Woodward who has documented distinct sign languages in Thailand, Vietnam and other parts of Asia.

Languages are considered related if 36 to 80 percent of the words on the list are significantly similar.

Four scholars involved in the research plan to present their study at the 3rd International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation in Honolulu on Sunday.