Things to do / Travel Guide
With 55,000 inhabitants, Kauai is home to a mix of native Hawaiians, of Polynesian descent, and Caucasians from the continental U.S., as well as many people of Filipino and Japanese descent.
The official languages of Kauai are English and Hawaiian. Originally, the Hawaiian language was strictly an oral or spoken language. American missionaries in the early 1800s helped create a written version of the language. Written Hawaiian contains five vowels and seven consonants: A, E, I, O, U, H, K, L, M, N, P, and W.
The local slang is Hawaiian Pidgin, essentially employing a combination of English and Hawaiian words. The Hawaiian Pidgin language is a significant part of the local culture on Kauai and the other Hawaiian islands.
Just under a quarter of the 55,000-strong Kauai population is either of Hawaiian or part-Hawaiian descent. The rest of the population is made up of a mix of people of Caucasian, Filipino, or Japanese descent.
As the least developed of the four largest Hawaiian islands, Kauai still retains the stereotypical laid-back Hawaiian attitude. Locals like to spend time with their families at the beach or in one of the many state parks around the island. In the evenings, they like to sometimes take advantage of the many luau feasts to be enjoyed across the island along with the tourists.
Kauai's impressive tourist infrastructure, which includes hotels, resorts, and golf courses, employs about 42% of the island's workforce and accounts for a large percentage of the local economy. The other source of income for Kauai is the agricultural sector with guava, coconut, sugar cane, taro, and papaya commercially grown on the island.
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