Nineteenth century Hawaii became one of the most literate nations on earth in its own language, with a flourishing Hawaiian press and a Bible translation completed in 1839, but the overthrow of the monarchy in 1893 was followed in 1896 by a law making English the medium of school instruction, and within two generations the language had nearly died. Children were punished for speaking Hawaiian at school, and by the 1980s fewer than fifty children were being raised in the language outside the isolated island of Niihau. The revival that followed is now a model studied worldwide.
Hawaiian was made an official language of the State of Hawaii in 1978, and in 1984 the first Punana Leo language nest preschool opened, adapting a Maori model, followed by immersion schooling through university level, Hawaiian language broadcasting, and a new generation of native speakers. The sacred register revived with the vernacular. Hula schools chant their mele with renewed attention to old texts, protocols of chant and response open public gatherings, and voyaging canoes such as Hokulea carry ceremonies in Hawaiian across the Pacific. The language remains endangered, but its trajectory has reversed, and its prayers, genealogies and chants are again being composed, not merely preserved.