Authenticity and the Revitalization of Hawaiian

The process of language revitalization relies heavily on education in its broadest sense. That is, there must be a viable conduit for the transmission of communicative competence, and any individual who contributes to that process is an educator. This article deals with the responsibility of such educators with respect to the quality of the product they intend to transmit. In particular, they must address the issue of authenticity, especially in the case of Hawaiian in which the shift to English has almost run its full course. It is inevitable in efforts to recover and maintain a language in a community in which few competent speakers (experts) remain that competing opinions will arise as to the direction such efforts should take, each professing to be better informed than the other and each pointing to its link to traditional forms as verification of its authenticity.