At the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, students can major in Linguistics at the undergraduate level.
We offer courses that touch on topics such as language and the brain, first language acquisition, language and politics, language and culture, second language learning, and bilingualism, to name just a few.
02/12/2019
https://www.mixcloud.com/KohalaRadio/01-17-2019-kukakuka/
Hey everyone, check out a couple of UH-Hilo Linguistics Majors discuss the language endangerment and revitalization situation in Okinawa.
01-17-2019 Kukakuka 01-17-2019 Kukakuka
Here is an article that appeared in the March 30, 2015 edition of the New Yorker magazine about language loss and language endangerment. It also has a reference to the doctoral program at UH-Hilo that focuses on language revitalization.
Students from the Semester at Sea visited us recently and here is a link to a video of the activity we all engaged in. The Hawaiian speaking students had to pretend that they did not any English and the non-Hawaiian speaking students had to attempt to find out how to say certain words in Hawaiian. It was meant to mimic the communication between the first Europeans to visit Hawaiʻi and try to speak with the Hawaiian natives. http://www.semesteratsea.org/2015/01/22/exploring-endangered-languages-in-hawaii/
08/12/2011
Here is a more serious video on Linguistics. It shows first of all how even the tiniest of babies are processing and learning their first languages but it also emphasizes how capable they are of learning second languages. Gotta watch out though because upon seeing this you are going to want to start teaching your children second and third languages immediately.
Patricia Kuhl: The linguistic genius of babies | Video on TED.com TED Talks At TEDxRainier, Patricia Kuhl shares astonishing findings about how babies learn one language over another -- by listening to the humans around them and "taking statistics" on the sounds they need to know. Clever lab experiments (and brain scans) show how 6-month-old babies use sophisticat...
08/12/2011
Check out this amusing video of Robin Williams on Letterman. You have to wait until about the 3-minute mark to see how this relates to Linguistics, but it is worth watching. Also note R. Williams' rather narrow view of Linguistics. At UH-Hilo, we show how Linguistics is actually a very rich and multi-faceted area of study.
Robin Williams on Letterman Part 1 Robin on The Late Show, 11-04-2005, promoting House of D.
If you are thinking about working or even traveling abroad short-term, consider majoring in Linguistics. With Linguistics as your degree, you can pursue a career in teaching language(s) internationally or maybe at least pick up some pocket money by teaching a few classes as you pass through different countries.
The main picture you see is from a conference held at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo in November of 2010. It brought scholars from Japan and Germany working on the Ryukyu languages of the Okinawan Islands together with our faculty and students here who focus on the revitalization of the Hawaiian Language. This is one of the many activities we engage in in the Linguistics Program at UH-Hilo.