Hawaii Questions

While the Hawaiian Language is pretty simple to master over time, it can also be very frusterating at times! Once you learn a few basic rules of pronunciation though, it will be much easier. It is beyond the scope of this article to teach you Hawaiian, but hopefully I’ll start you toward a better understanding of it.

English is used all over the Islands, but most of the streets, buildings, shops etc. have Hawaiian names. The locals just love laughing at the tourists trying to pronounce some of them! A basic understanding will at least help you sound out a few of them right.

The Hawaiian alphabet uses english letters, but there is only 12 letters used, There are 8 consonants and five vowels. Those letters are: H K L M N P W and A E I O U.

The H K L M N and P all sound the same as in english. The W has a few variations:

W: After iand e pronounced v
W: After u and o pronounced like w
W: At the start of a word or after an a pronounced like w or v

Vowels:

A: Like the a in far
E: Like the e in bet or sometimes like the ay in pay
I: Like the y in city
O: Like the o in sole
U: Like the oo in moon

There is one more official consonant used and that is the ‘Okina, we know it as an apostrophe mark ( ‘ ). The ‘Okina is a glottal stop - or a brief pause in the word. The pause is very fast, and if you are not carefully listening you may miss it. A good example, think of the English “oh oh” - the small pause, or silence, between the first oh and the second oh is the same pause you would make if an ‘Okina or a “-” appeared in a word (for example… oh’oh or oh-oh).

Another symbol used is the kahakō which stresses a vowel and just tells you to hold it slightly longer, it doesn’t alter the vowels sound. The Kahakō is shown as ā, Ä“, Ä«, ō, and Å«.

Now try pronounce Hawaiia’s state fish — the humuhumunukunukuapuaa.

Uhmm ok, let’s try breaking it down a little bit: hu-mu-hu-mu-nu-ku-nu-ku-’ā-pu-a-’a is that easier?

There are a few great books listed here to help you learn some basic Hawaiian Language.

To learn some more about the Hawaiian Language here are a few links to help you:

http://www.instanthawaii.com/cgi-bin/hawaii?Language
http://www.eyeofhawaii.com/Hawaiian/hawaiian.htm
http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/Shores/6794//

Aloha

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