Hawaii - Jeff Campbell [494]
Language
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PRONUNCIATION
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Hawaii has two official state languages: English and Hawaiian. Although English has long replaced Hawaiian as the dominant language, many Hawaiian words and phrases are commonly used in speech and in print.
Prior to the arrival of Christian missionaries in 1820, the Hawaiians had no written language. Knowledge was passed on through complex oral genealogies, stories, chants, songs and descriptive place names. The missionaries rendered the spoken language into the Roman alphabet and established the first presses in the islands, which were used to print the Bible and other religious instructional materials in Hawaiian.
Throughout the 19th century, as more and more foreigners (particularly the Americans and the British) settled in the islands, the everyday use of Hawaiian declined. In the 1890s English was made the official language of government and education.
The push for statehood, from 1900 to 1959, added to the decline of the Hawaiian language. Speaking Hawaiian was seen as a deterrent to American assimilation, thus adult native speakers were strongly discouraged from teaching their children Hawaiian as the primary language in the home.
This attitude remained until the early 1970s when the Hawaiian community began to experience a cultural renaissance. A handful of young Hawaiians lobbied to establish Hawaiian language classes at the University of Hawai‘i, and Hawaiian language immersion preschools followed in the 1980s. These preschools are modeled after Maori kohanga reo (language nests), where the primary method of language perpetuation is through speaking and hearing the language on a daily basis. In Hawai‘i’s ‘Aha Punana Leo preschools, all learning and communication takes place in the mother tongue – ka ‘olelo makuahine.
Hawaiian has now been revived from the point of extinction and is growing throughout the community. Record numbers of students enroll in Hawaiian language classes in high schools and colleges, and immersion-school graduates are raising a new generation of native speakers.
If you’d like to discover more about the Hawaiian language, get a copy of Lonely Planet’s South Pacific phrasebook.
PRONUNCIATION
Written Hawaiian uses just 13 letters: five vowels (a, e, i, o, u), seven consonants (h, k, l, m, n, p, w) and the glottal stop (‘). The letters h, l, m and n are pronounced much the same as in English. Usually every letter in Hawaiian words is pronounced, and each vowel has a different pronunciation depending on whether it is stressed or unstressed.
Consonants
p/k similar to English, but with less aspiration; k may be replaced with t w after i and e, usually a soft English ‘v;’ thus the town of Hale‘iwa is pronounced ‘Hale‘iva,’ After u or o it’s often like English ‘w,’ thus Olowalu is pronounced as written. After a or at the beginning of a word it can be as English ‘w’ or ‘v,’ thus you’ll hear both Hawai‘i and Havai‘i (The Big Island).
Unstressed vowels (without macron)
a as in ‘ago’
e as in ‘bet’
i as the ‘y’ in ‘city’
o as in ‘sole’
u as in ‘rude’
Glottal Stops & Macrons
Written Hawaiian uses both glottal stops (‘), called ‘okina, and macrons (a straight bar above a vowel, eg ā), called kahakō. In modern print both the glottal stop and the macron are often omitted. In this guidebook, the macrons have been omitted, but glottal stops have been included, as they can be helpful in striving to pronounce common place names and words correctly.
The glottal stop indicates a break between two vowels, producing an effect similar to saying ‘oh-oh’ in English. For example, ‘a‘a, a type of lava, is pronounced ‘ah-ah,’ and Ho‘okena, a place name, is pronounced ‘Ho-oh-kena.’ A macron inidicates that the vowel is stressed and has a long pronunciation.
Glottal stops and macrons not only affect pronunciation, but can give a word a completely different meaning. For example, ai (with no glottal) means ‘sexual intercourse,’