Hawaiʻi Sign Language

Historical records document its presence on the islands as early as the 1820s, but HSL was not formally recognized by linguists until 2013.

HSL was recognized by linguists on March 1, 2013, by a research group from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

The letter described several instances of deaf Kānaka Maoli communicating to Bingham in their own sign language.

[22][23] HSL does not have verbal classifiers – these were previously thought to be universal in sign languages, and ASL makes extensive use of these.

[24] HSL also has several entirely non-manual lexical items, including verbs and nouns, which are not typical in ASL.

[26] Equivalent services for HSL are nearly non-existent, partially because some members of the Deaf community in Hawaiʻi have felt that it is not worth preservation.

Their first goal is to teach graduate students and other linguists how to document HSL and other small sign languages used in Hawaiʻi.