The Department of Linguistics at the University of Hawai‘i was founded in 1963 as an active research and teaching unit dedicated to the scientific study of language.

The faculty and students in the department are committed to understanding and explaining how language works - how it is acquired, how it is used, how it changes over time, how it is represented in the brain, and how threats to linguistic diversity can be addressed through documentation and conservation efforts.

In carrying out this mission, the Department has a special focus on the languages of the vast Austronesian family (which includes the indigenous languages of Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Taiwan) and on the languages of Asia.

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