Re-discovered

This is not about Hamana Kalili's famous Shaka but it is about the recent discovery of what could be a national treasure.  

Hawaiian Sign Language or HSL, offers evidence that Hawaiians understood that communicating with the deaf or hearing disabled was simply a matter of doing life. No politics, no compliance, just a need to connect one person's message with another. Passed down through the generations from hand to hand the language still exists.  

While touted as the "first new language discovered in the United State since the 1930's" the real excitement suggests HSL may predate American Sign Language. One of the researchers of this discovery is Linda Lambrecht, an American Sign Language instructor at Kapiolani Community College who used the language as a child. "Oh, I feel like jumping, I'm so ecstatic," she said about the recognition of the language. "All these years, people said, 'That's just pidgin, that's pidgin language, pidgin sign."