A Dictionary of the Hawaiian Language

The roots of A Dictionary of the Hawaiian Language go back to the late 1820s, when Lorrin Andrews arrived in Hawai'i and began a systematic study of Hawaiian, which grew into a love of the language that was to continue for forty years. In 1836, he published a Hawaiian "vocabulary," which eventually quadrupled in size to become the present work, which first appeared in 1865. Although many missionary linguists compiled dictionaries of Polynesian languages to aid in translating, Andrews had a different motive: to collect "specimens of the language of common life." To this end, he used native speakers, mostly through their writings, as the authorities for defining words. In the 1860s, Hawaiian was indeed the language of common life, for it was used in everyday communication, and in such institutions as the schools, the government, and the church. Thus, this dictionary provides a rare and valuable glimpse into mid-nineteenth-century Hawaiian culture and thought. This is especially important today, as students and scholars examine the past to help insure that Hawaiian continues as a living language in the present and the future. Book jacket.

Lorrin Andrews (1795-1868) was educated at Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, and Princeton Theological Seminary, New Jersey. He was a member of the Third Company of missionaries to Hawai'i, arriving in 1828. One of his first posts was that of head of the Lahainaluna School on Maui. There, he translated both sacred and secular works into Hawaiian, especially textbooks. But in 1842, he resigned from the mission on a matter of principle, objecting to the fact that the mission board accepted funds from states that allowed slavery. After his resignation, he served in many positions in public life, most notably as a judge at various levels in the Hawaiian government. Besides the dictionary and his translations, Andrews's most important published work is his Grammar of the Hawaiian Language (1854)