While we deal here with both travel and language, in the case of Hawai‘i, along with the travel we’ll do more with the language than usual. On this trip, I was probably one of the few who arrived with a Hawaiian dictionary, purchased recently in Tampa, although many language books for learning Hawaiian were available in stores. I will emphasize that you cannot learn a language from a dictionary, but it is a handy short-term reference, especially for the superficial things we’ll be talking about here.

Hawaiian Language   I will start by saying I don’t speak Hawaiian, but of course that never stopped us before from looking into varied and obvious features of a language. I do know a bit about it though, and anyone traveling to Hawai‘i is well advised to at least know how to manage with place names, such as Haleakala or Kealakakua. And then there’s King Kamehameha I, whose statue seems to be everywhere. And how about the official state fish with the famously long name, the humuhumunukunukuapua‘a. How can you manage names like that?

Very easily, thank you, if you know what you’re looking at and have the slightest bit of a foundation. You will have one shortly, and I know just where I first got mine.

When I was studying at Queens College of the City University of New York I worked a number of hours in the library, doing very simple things like shelving books. I first pointed out something I picked up there just browsing when we discussed Samuel Pepys (2006/1). On another occasion, I was browsing in the Language Section, the 400’s, when I came across a slim volume on Hawaiian. My field falls within the Indoeuropean Language family, specifically the ones in Europe proper (not in the branch in India and Persia), including the locations where they’ve spread around the world, and I knew nothing whatsoever about Polynesian Languages, so I flipped through the book and took the first steps of the odyssey we’ll talk about here. (I’ve recently delved more into more about the family that Polynesian languages belong to and it’s fascinating. I never would have thought how widespread those languages are. I’ll be discussing it when I go to the South Pacific in February, and I think you’ll agree that the geographic spread is amazing. But I’m jumping ahead too far now.)

There are three things that make up a language: phonology, syntax, and lexicon. OK, now forget I said that, and let’s start that again in English.

Thee are three things that make up a language: the sound system, the grammar, and the vocabulary. (Isn’t that better?) I know nothing about Hawaiian grammar, and have only a few odd words of Hawaiian vocabulary (as you do, too: Aloha, friends! Do you dance the hula? Actually, I have a few more than that, and you will, too, shortly).

[Warning: keep cool, and realize that the hula is as important to the average Hawaiian as square dancing is to the average American and the Schuhplattler is to the average German. Yes, they’re traditional folk dances and worth preserving, but they do not affect daily life, as tourists are led to believe (or, as tourists delude themselves to be the case). And we want to be travelers, not tourists. To show how the hula has been prostituted for tourists, keep in mind that almost always tourists are shown women dancing so they can be ogled, whereas the dance traditionally is meant for both men and women. Don’t get me started.]

But the easiest thing about a language to acquire a bit of is its sound system, especially when it’s as stupefyingly simple as Hawaiian’s is. As a matter of fact, we can acquire MOST of the Hawaiian phonology (see, we’re back to the big words) right here in a few paragraphs. Furthermore, let me remind you about the term “sound-symbol relationship”. You have a poor SSR if spellings vary hugely from pronunciations (in English say FAIT, spell it “fight”; in French say O, spell it “eau”), which means you double your work, having to keep in mind both a pronunciation and spelling for numerous words. But you have a good SSR if spellings and pronunciations run pretty much one-to-one (in Italian say mi.LA.no, spell it Milano; in Hawaiian say ho.no.LU.lu, spell it Honolulu). Hawaiian has close to a perfect sound-symbol relationship, as you see.

[Pop quiz: how many sounds are represented by the English spelling “thought”? Or by the French spelling (ils) disent? Decide, then check the next paragraph.

The answers are three in each case: “Thought” has the (1) “TH” sound, for which we’ve abandoned the single letter thorn; (2) the “AW” sound; (3) a T. The French word “disent” is pronounced DIZ. In each word, you use roughly (RUF.li) twice the letters for the three sounds, which is about 100% overkill, and to the bargain, in the French word, the Z sound is spelled with an S.

Now, how many sounds are in the Hawaiian word “mahalo”. Duh. Six. This word shows a typically perfect sound-symbol relationship. So what does this mean? See an H and say an H. Or, hear an N and write an N. In other words, the Hawaiian sound system equals almost perfectly the Hawaiian alphabet, and we’ll discuss the odd quirk, one with the vowels and one with the consonants.]

Hawaiian Sound System & Alphabet   So if I give you the sound system, you’ll know what the alphabet is, or vice versa. We’re going to do that, but will keep it simple. For instance, vowels can be either short or long, but it’s nothing to worry about for our purposes.

Here’s the first shocker, just as I remember seeing it on the front page of that book in the library when I was in college: Hawaiian has just 13 sounds. So yes, its alphabet has just 13 letters. The simplicity of all this is what appealed to me from the start. It’s so easy, I’m not going to give you the list. We’re going to make our tally together.

5 VOWELS While in English, the five vowel letters can correspond to about 13 different vowel sounds (the vowel AW mentioned above being one of them) those same five vowel letters in Hawaiian correspond to just what you think. Here are some familiar words, and a couple of place names you will have to know if you’re in Hawai‘i:

Caution: the word “ ‘ukulele” has become heavily Anglicized, where it’s spelled without the apostrophe and pronounced something like yew.ka.LE.li. That’s fine for English, but if you want to be authentic, pronounce it with the vowels we’ve been talking about. If you need it shown this way, here: ‘oo.koo.LE.le. Both U’s are the same, as are both E’s. I’ll tell you later about the apostrophe.

Now, pronounce the name of the largest bay on the Kona coast: Kealakakua. It’s ke.a.la.ka.KU.a. (That’s KOO, now KYEW.) Pronounce the name of the huge volcano on Maui: Haleakala (stress the middle A). It’s ha.le.A.ka.la. Here’s a short one: the Iao Valley on Maui, whose name has only vowels. It’s i.A.o. We haven’t gotten too far into this and already these complicated-looking names become a lot easier.

The quirk with the vowels is an easy one: diphthongs. As a rule of thumb, vowel-plus-I or vowel-plus-U are pronounced together. The most frequent are EI, OI, AI, AU. But you already know that a flower garland is a lei, so that’s just one syllable LEI, with each element pronounced just as written. Maybe you’ve heard of the taro paste known as poi, and that’s POI, one syllable. And of course you see one in Hawai’i, pronounced ha.WAI.’i. And of course you know Maui, pronounced MAU.i. Just remember that AU is always pronounced that way, so when you see the two huge volcanoes on the Big Island, Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, you’ll continue to rhyme the first syllable with “how” and not say “maw”: MAU.na LO.a, MAU.na KE.a. These diphthongs are not a major problem.

8 CONSONANTS I still almost have to laugh when I consider that we’re dealing here with only eight consonants.

So to alphabetize the consonants we have: H K L M N P W (‘)

And the entire alphabet would be: A E H I K L M N O P U W (‘)

Now I’ve told you just a bit of a lie here, to make a point, so I’ll come clean. While the apostrophe (‘) represents a full-fledged consonant, its written form is NOT considered part of the alphabet and words having it are alphabetized disregarding it. In other words, ‘ukulele is to be found under U. There is no dictionary listing for (‘), and W is the last letter of the alphabet.

So let’s talk about the consonants, although I have nothing to say at all about six of them: H K L M N P, since they all fall into the duh! category. We’ll spend some time on the last two, though.

W = W/V The W and V sounds in Hawaiian, while in actuality appearing as separate sounds, are not HEARD by native speakers as seeming different, but just as two variations of the same sound. For those of us who speak languages where they are starkly different, that seems hard to imagine. The technical term is that they are “two allophones of the same phoneme”, and I promise not to say things like that again. But an example might help.

Say a P with a clear puff of air, like when blowing out a candle. Let’s call that P-puff. Now say a P with no discernable puff of air at all, one that wouldn’t even make a candle flicker. We’ll call that P-calm. These are two different sounds, two “kinds of P”. [The candle exercise is actually used by speech pathologists to demonstrate the difference to (1) deaf English speakers trying to learn to speak and (2) speakers of languages where these sounds are indeed different and don’t understand why in English they’re perceived as “the same”.]

In English, P before a vowel is always P-puff, automatically. Say PIN, POT, PUN, hold your hand in front of your mouth, and feel what is called the “aspiration” of this sound. But in English, when S comes before the P before the vowel, only P-calm appears, also automatically. Say SPIN, SPOT, SPUN and you’ll feel no breath. Now: when a language takes two different sounds and makes their appearance automatic, depending on the location, that means the speakers of that language perceive those two different sounds as just variations of each other, dependent on what is known as “complimentary distribution”. However in another language, P-puff and P-calm might be considered two different sounds, where they are not distributed in a complimentary fashion.

That’s the situation with W and V in Hawaiian. Speakers of other languages might perceive them as two different sounds, but within Hawaiian, they’re perceived as two variations of the same thing, that is, they’re in complimentary distribution. What we need now is to know WHERE W and V appear in Hawaiian, in other words, what is this distribution that is complimentary with V in one location but W in another. Not being an expert on Hawaiian, I find it a bit hard to determine that. Dictionaries can be notoriously poor on explaining something like this. However, the interpretation I’ve read that I have most confidence in is actually quite simple. Here’s the distribution of the W/V sounds that is complimentary.

If a W is located AFTER A STRESSED VOWEL, it appears as a V-sound. Actually, this location is not too common. There is a town near Honolulu called Ewa. This W is after the stressed vowel, so it’s pronounced as a V: E.va (and sounds like “Well, did you evvah?”). One of the smaller Hawaiian islands is Kaho’olawe, and would be ka.ho.‘o.LA.ve (again, we’ll get to the apostrophe shortly). These two place names are the only ones I know like this. As I look in the dictionary, I find these words: awa (port), iwa (nine), lawe (to take).

EVERYWHERE ELSE a W is a W. Say W in wahine (woman), and of course, in Hawai‘i.

You may find other descriptions of the distribution of W/V, but again, I have most confidence in this description, although I am not an expert in Hawaiian and cannot swear to it. I have also read where someone in the know pointed out that if someone says “Havai‘i” you can be sure they don’t know what they’re talking about and are trying to put on airs.

‘OKINA (GLOTTAL STOP) To me this is the most fun sound in Hawaiian and it’s VERY EASY. Many “language people” reading this will say to themselves, oh, the apostrophe represents a glottal stop! Fun! But this website is meant for the lay public, so we start from scratch.

Form a P with your lips. Hold it, then release it. You have stopped the air, haven’t you? That’s why P is called a stop, one kind of consonant. Let’s move in order into the mouth. The next point where you can stop the air is with the tongue tip. Do a T. T is a stop. At the back of the tongue form a K and then release it. K is a stop. Got it? Consonants that stop the air like this are called stops. You can be more precise and call P a bilabial stop, since you use both lips to form it. All the stops have names like this.

Continuing backward (yes, we can go further), let’s make a stop way back in your voicebox. Close it and stop the air, just as you did with your lips. Now release it, and voilà, another stop! Do it a few times until you feel more comfortable with it. This area of your voicebox is called the glottis, so this is called a glottal stop.

[The French and German names appear on occasion in linguistic study. The French name is “coup de glotte” pronounced sort of like KOOD GLUT, and meaning literally a “glottal hit”. In German it’s a “Knacklaut”, pronounced KNOK.lout and meaning literally “crackle sound”. It’s the same Knack as in Knackwurst.]

So why should we care about this? We never use it, right? Wrong. We THINK we never use it for similar reasons that it can be automatic, similar to P-puff versus P-calm. In most languages where it exists, such as English and German, it doesn’t appear as a regular sound. But in Hawaiian, it’s a full-fledged phoneme, or regular sound. It even has a name: ‘okina. In other uses, as my Hawaiian dictionary tells me, ‘okina means “cutting off”, so once again, there is a reference to the cutting off of air in the throat.

The symbol in the phonetic alphabet for a glottal stop looks like a question mark without the period below. But in Hawaiian, as we’ve seen, a glottal stop is indicated by an apostrophe (‘), which is what I will use here throughout. Watch.

Suppose something bad is about to happen, and as a warning you say in English: Oh-oh. The spelling tells you little. The use of an H spelling there is meaningless. If anything, you’re saying o o. But no you’re not. You’re saying a glottal stop twice: ‘o ‘o once before each O. Say this several times, and feel your glottis closing again and again. Then try and say it WITHOUT the glottal stop. It is extremely difficult (although possible) to leave it out here. As an exercise and to make sure you realize what you’re doing, try saying it in all combinations: ‘o ‘o, o o, ‘o o, o ‘o. It will drive you crazy to try to avoid the glottal stop here, so give up and just say ‘o ‘o every time, the way all English speakers do.

Glottal stops in English appear automatically (there’s the key word) before a beginning vowel, and the more emphatic you say something, the more pronounced the glottal stops become. Say “I always eat early” and if you try hard, you can say it without glottal stops, though it will sound somewhat artificial. Normally, a glottal stop will start almost each word: ‘I ‘always ‘eat ‘early. Say “I ALWAYS eat early” and the stressed ‘ALWAYS is guaranteed to have one. It’s the glottal stop that makes it seem even more stressed than it is. [Compare German “Es ist Achim”, which will usually sound like “ ‘Es ‘ist ‘Achim”.]

Let’s have a little more fun before we get back to Hawaiian. English has a marvelous way of saying No or Yes, which are commonly spelled Uh-uh and Uh-huh. Again, these spellings are useless, and the H’s after the vowels represent nothing, like in Oh-oh. Realizing that we’re using a U as in but, figure out what it is you’re saying when you want to be negative.

You’ve said: ‘u ‘u (with U as in but). To show that the first syllable is stressed, write it ‘U ‘u. This expression uses two glottal stops. You can’t say it without them, just try. Now analyze what you say when you give a positive answer. It’s actually quite surprising.

You say ‘u hu (with U as in but). To show that now the second syllable is stressed, write it ‘u HU. We find that the standard spelling does show here a genuine H before the vowel. We also note that you shift from negative ‘U ‘u to positive ‘u HU by changing the stressed syllable and changing one ‘ to H.

The ‘okina in Hawaiian words is almost always left out in their spelling in English, including on many signs in Hawaii showing street and town names, but its use is increasing as more ethnic consciousness appears. I am in no way suggesting you start using this glottal stop when you use a Hawaiian word in English, but you should try using it in Hawaiian.

Here: say ‘o ‘o again. Now say ‘i ‘i. Now say it just once: ‘i. Now say Hawai’i. very consciously including the glottal stop. English doesn’t normally say the glottal stop there, but it does insert something else. What?

The standard English pronunciation of Hawaii is ha.WAI.yi. English almost always inserts a Y sound there, although you will also hear ha.WAI.i on occasion.

Note that Maui, uniquely among the eight island names, does NOT have a glottal stop, so compare saying Maui and Hawai‘i. But also note these three islands, similar to Hawai‘i: Kaua‘i, Lana‘i, Moloka‘i. And two other islands besides Kaho‘olawe include the ‘okina: Ni‘ihau and O‘ahu. This last island, the location of Honolulu, can be difficult to say, since you will assuredly get carried away by overdoing it and saying * ‘O‘ahu (in linguistics, an asterisk indicates a non-existent form). Avoid two glottal stops here and say O‘ahu correctly.

One other error, which is actually surprising. Some people, noticing names such as Kaua‘i, Lana‘i, Moloka‘i, end up saying *Hawa‘i, forgetting that there’s an AI in this name.

Now what words have we skipped? Say ‘ukulele, not in English, but in Hawaiian, and with OO sounds. Go back to the island name Kaho‘olawe (remember the V). How about the name ‘okina itself? And Ni‘ihau is ni.‘I.hau.

Once you can do this, you will have surprises galore. Remember the name of the free-flowing dress, the muu-muu. In English, it sounds like a cow. Here’s the revelation: it’s spelled mu‘umu‘u, in other words, what looks like one syllable is two. Say mu‘umu‘u with its full four syllables including two glottal stops. If you’ve ever had hors d‘oeuvres referred to in Hawaiian and served on a pupu platter, you’re safe: pupu is really the word, not like mu‘umu‘u, but compare the two pronunciations. And how about lu‘au? Be sure to include the ‘okina.

Hawaiian Syllabic Structure   Syllabic structure sounds complicated, but is quite easy, especially in a language such as Hawaiian. What the term means can simply be explained like this.

The vowel in the center of a syllable is the weightlifter. The consonant(s) on either side are the weights. In an English word like “but”, the weightlifter (vowel) holds one weight (consonant) on each side, in this pattern: CvC, but doesn’t have to: “it” is vC; “to” is Cv. There is a considerable variety of possible syllabic structures in English and other languages. Look an the multiple consonants (consonant clusters) on either side in words like “strip” CCCvC, or “lisps” CvCCC.

In the past I’ve mentioned my term “la-la language” for those languages that tend to have many, many syllables in the simple Cv pattern, just like when singing la-la. Italian (na.po.li) and Spanish (to.le.do) do this very often, but not exclusively. For instance, fi.ren.ze and bar.ce.lo.na, although heavy on Cv, each also has one CvC.

But then there’s Hawaiian, where Cv is all you get: ho.no.lu.lu; hi.lo; ko.na. Not only is Hawaiian phonology simple, with so few sounds, so is its syllabic structure.

But I lied again. There are precisely two slight variations in Hawaiian syllabic structure, but they are only minor variations in the standard Cv form: (1) the vowel can also appear in the vowel blending known as a diphthong: lei, poi, ha.wai.‘i. (2) Surprisingly, the consonant can be missing, which is a “zero” phenomenon, and the missing consonant can, if you wish, be symbolized with a zero. For instance, the syllables of “aloha” are 0a.lo.ha, and Haleakala could be ha.le.0a.ka.la. “Maui” illustrates both variations, since the first syllable has a diphthong and the last one is missing a consonant: mau.0i. So does the name of the active volcano, Kilauea: ki.lau.0e.0a. Also, don’t forget that the glottal stop is a consonant, so ‘u.ku.le.le shows no variations from the norm at all.

From all this do realize that there are absolutely no consonant clusters in Hawaiian, and that no word can end in a consonant, since no syllable can end in a consonant.

Reduplication   And then there’s Hawaiian reduplication, and is that fun. Let me illustrate just how I figured that out, then learned more about it. On our first visit to Hawai‘i, I started being overwhelmed by the long words. I particularly remember seeing all the statues and pictures of King Kamehameha I, and wondered how anyone can remember such a long and complicated name. Then I looked at the word carefully. If you said KA, then just said MEHA twice, you’ve got it, and it’s not hard at all. Saying something twice, that is, “duplicating” it, is called reduplication, and Hawaiian uses it all the time.

Other languages do, too, just not as often. If you want to tell some kids to calm down, you may shout “Quiet! Quiet”. Why might we do this when once would seem to be enough? Emphasis, apparently.

As far as I can tell, either one or two syllables may be reduplicated together. Sometimes, both the single form and the reduplicated form are listed in the dictionary; other times just the reduplicated form. Examples will surely help.

The famous beach just east of Honolulu is Waikiki. This is what we have in the dictionary. Ki has several meanings, all of which are similar. It means to squirt water (as with a syringe), or to shoot (a gun). You can see that the imagery in both is similar. Ki has its own entry in the dictionary. Kiki has its own entry as well, and is defined primarily as a “reduplication of ki”, implying the same meanings, but more emphatically. Wai means water, and Waikiki can be translated as “Spouting Water”. The explanation is this. Before the beach area was developed, there were a number of streams that came down from inland and crossed the beach to enter the ocean. Some of the locations where they were are still marked as you enter the beach. When the swampy area these streams came from was drained in 1919-1928 by the still very visible Ala Wai Canal, the streams disappeared, so that the Spouting Water that Waikiki was named after is no longer apparent.

There is in my dictionary only a reduplicated form lulu, without the single form having its own entry, and it means “calm, peace, shelter”. Hono means “bay”, so Honolulu means “Sheltered Bay”. Other place names with Hono are Honomanu, Honoli‘i, Honokohau. A variation of hono is hana, and Hana is the name of a town on Maui I’ll be talking about later. There is also a Hanauma, and a Hanalei.

The main port in Kaua‘i is Nawiliwili. Wili is “to twist”, but wiliwili is the name of a native Hawaiian tree. Na is “the”, the plural definite article, so Nawilwili is The Wiliwili (Trees), or even better, just as you’d name a place “The Oaks”, since you already know they’re trees, The Wiliwilis. As for “na”, on the north side of Kaua‘i you find the very famous Na Pali, The Cliffs.

I see only a reduplicated entry “lele”, which means “leaping”. While “uku” means to pay, “ ‘uku” means flea, so you see the glottal stop makes a significant difference (defining it as a phoneme). Anyway, put them together and you get the charming meaning of ‘ukulele as a “leaping flea”. Just picture a strumming hand and you’ll see the image.

Back to the king. The dictionary entry mehameha is already reduplicated, and means, “lonely, solitary, silent”. Ka (and ke) are the singular definite articles “the”, so Kamehameha seems to mean “The Silent One”.

I hope you get the idea of how common reduplication is in Hawaiian, and how words that seem to be unbelievably long are actually made up of much smaller elements. This is true in many languages, where taking a word into its components will help understanding what it means. And this is the point where we finally get to have some fun with the humuhumunukunukuapua‘a. Just break it up into its components: say humu twice, nuku twice, then a, then pua‘a. Here’s what it’s all about.

As it turns out, it’s the name of the state fish of Hawai‘i, but that’s no big deal. It’s just the length of its name in Hawaiian, and the standard joke is that the name is longer than the fish. I’ve finally gotten to see my first humuhumunukunukuapua‘a, and it’s small, but not that small. It’s about the size of your hand, and somewhat diamond-shaped, but longer than it is high. It’s brightly colored, with a white front, and gold and black stripes in the back. It has an elongated nose to poke into the coral reefs for food, which contributes to its unusual name. Its eyes are also set way back, almost to the middle of its body. But it’s its name that’s fun.

Humu means to sew, and humuhumu is a running stitch, which I think is already an interesting take on reduplication. But humuhumu has a secondary meaning of “triggerfish”, which is the type of fish this is. I also suspect the reduplication here has a diminutive affect, implying a small triggerfish. (It’s also called reef triggerfish, since it lives on the coral reefs, and most interestingly, the Picasso triggerfish, because of its colors and stripes. Actually Picasso is a good description of its colorful looks.)

Nuku is a snout, and its reduplication, nukunuku, means pretty much the same thing, although again, I suspect it’s a bit diminutive, so “small snout”. “A” means “like”, and a pua‘a is a pig. So what do we get? (Small) triggerfish + (small) snout + like + pig could give us “triggerfish with a pig-like small snout”, but let’s simplify that to “pig-snouted triggerfish”. Et voilà.

It is also interesting that, in traditional Hawaiian culture, each land animal had an equivalent in the sea—this fact alone seems interestingly typical of an island culture—and, not surprisingly, the sea equivalent of the pig was the humuhumunukunukuapua‘a.

In Honolulu I went to the aquarium to see this fish, a visit I’ll discuss later, and I remember I happened to also have seen an attractive, brilliant yellow fish with a black-and-silver mask called the butterflyfish. Only afterward did Wikipedia point out something quite relevant here. Famous as the humuhumunukunukuapua‘a may be for the length of its name in Hawaiian (22 letters and sounds), it is not the longest fish name in Hawaiian. The Hawaiian name for the butterflyfish turns out to have 25 letters and sounds, and is lauwiliwilinukunuku‘oi‘oi. WHAT FUN!

We already know about the wiliwili tree from the port of Nawiliwili. We already know that nukunuku is a (small) snout. So at this point, we’ve already conquered 16 letters and sounds of the 25. Lau is leaf, so lauwiliwili is a wiliwili leaf. ‘Oi means superior, and its reduplicated form ‘oi ‘oi emphasizes that. So what do we get with lauwiliwilinukunuku‘oi‘oi? Should we say long-nosed or long-snouted? I’ll go for the latter, so we get “wiliwili-leaf-shaped, long-snouted, very special (fish)”.

Although other examples of reduplication will probably come up in our discussion, let’s close the topic for now by showing how I first heard of the word (maybe you did, too) humuhumunukunukuapua‘a, in a popular traditional Hawaiian song. Along the Kona Coast on the Big Island of Hawai‘i is Kealakakua Bay, not far south from the town of Kona. The song “My Little Grass Shack” was first introduced in Kona on 4 July 1933 and has since become an island classic. Here is a rendition by Hank Snow on YouTube: “My Little Grass Shack” Listen especially for the last verse, copied here:

Listen particularly for his clear pronunciation of the glottal stop in Hawai‘i and the fish’s name. If a Canadian who made his name in Nashville can do it, so can you. Make sure you can say Kealakakua as clearly as you hear it. Aside from the reference to Kona, the song mentions several other Hawaiian words and phrases, but I’ll just mention here “fish and poi” and “kanes and wahines”, which is the awkward English plural of a pair of Hawaiian words we’ll discuss later.

Adaption   We’ve mentioned this before in regard to other languages. If a word from language B is adapted into language A, but if language B has a certain sound that language A does not, what happens? Well, one of two things.

Again we go back to the French phrase in English déjà vu. The English speaker has two choices; either pronounce vu in the original as VÜ (with kiss-I), or adapt it to a sound English does have, ending up with pronouncing vu as VOO (but which has the additional danger of sounding like the French word vous).

The same thing happens with the word masseur. Use either the original pronunciation mass.ÖR (with kiss-E) or adapt it as mass.OOR. (It’s odd that both Ü and Ö are adapted into the same sound, OO.)

How do you choose? It depends how thoroughly the word has entered English. Most people feel both words are thoroughly Anglicized and will say OO both times. I personally would agree to that with masseur, but would pronounce déjà vu in the original, but it’s just a matter of taste and of feeling how “English” a word it has become.

Another example in another language: when discussing detective novels, the English word Thriller is now used in German. But what happens to the TH? German speakers in the know might try to maintain its original sound. Many would adapt it to sound like Sriller, even though words cannot start with SR in German any more than they can in English, but at least that “fakes” the original pretty well. Some would opt for the poorest choice and try a spelling pronunciation as Triller. Personally, even as a native speaker of English, I would feel uncomfortable using the original English pronunciation of that word within a German sentence, and would personally opt for saying Sriller myself.

Why do we have this discussion here? Maybe you can tell what’s coming. Hawaiian has so very few sounds that there has to be a tremendous amount of adaptation of one familiar sound for a foreign one. And worse, still, all Hawaiian syllables MUST appear in the form Cv. So let’s take a look of adapted English words in Hawaiian, of which there are many. The glottal stop doesn’t replace anything, so we’re left with MPW as lip sounds, LN on the front of the tongue, K on the back of the tongue, and H in the throat.

What country is Kanaka? Well, that’s not too hard. If we lack a D, which is a stop, we use the only tongue stop, K, so we’re talking about Canada.

‘Amelika—with no R, use an L for America. Also add a glottal stop.

Pakipika. Think water. Here we have something new. Pacific ends in a consonant, so to say it, it appears along with a vowel. This shows the significance of this syllabic structure.

Mekiko is Mexico. Kelemania is Germany. Lukia is Russia. These are all English words adapted for Hawaiian, and these are the easy ones.

Look at some proper names: Paulo (Paul), Pakelika (Patrick), Kilikina (Christina), Kukana (Susan). It’s just as well that many Hawaiian names are used.

I want to complete this discussion of adaptions by referring to the Hawaiian Christmas phrase and song, Mele Kalikimaka, which is particularly appropriate now at the end of the year. Let me offer some background.

Robert Alexander Anderson, from Honolulu, often listed as R Alex Anderson, was a prolific writer of Hawaiian music. He lived to be 101 (1894-1995). Probably his most famous song, frequently heard in Hawai‘i today, is “Lovely Hula Hands”, which he wrote in 1939. Here Marty Robbins sings it on YouTube: “Lovely Hula Hands”

Note the rhyme of “valley” and “pali” (cliff). The repeated phrase “kou lima nani e” seems to mean literally, as I dig in the dictionary, “your hand lovely (is?)”. Note also that there are dialect variations in Hawaiian, as anywhere else, and I here him clearly singing “tou” instead of the standard “kou”. See if you hear it, too.

Apparently Anderson had been asked by someone why there weren’t any Hawaiian Christmas songs, which inspired him to write Mele Kalikimaka. Again, that phrase is simply the Hawaiianized pronunciation of the English phrase “Merry Christmas”. Let’s see how that happened.

First, language alterations and adaptions happen by sounds, not by spelling, so let’s look at the sounds (and syllables) this way: me.ri kris.mas

“me” is no problem, and appears as “me”; “ri”--as we’ve seen, R is replaced by L; I would have expected “li”, but we get “le”, and therefore “me.le”. Let’s jump to the last syllable, “mas”: two consonants mean two syllables, and S goes to K: “ma.ka”. “kris” has three consonants, which mean three syllables, and again R>L and S>K: “ka.li.ki”. When a vowel is needed for a new syllable, I cannot always account for which one is used, although similarity to a neighboring vowel could be a factor, such as ending up with two A’s in maka and two I’s in kaliki. The result is: Mele Kalikimaka, and yes, those are Hawaiianized English words, just as déjà voo is an Anglicized French phrase and Sriller is a Germanicized English word. These are all examples of the adaption towards that which is more familiar to one.

When Anderson wrote the words and music to Mele Kalikimaka in 1949, he had a fantastic stroke of luck. Bing Crosby was a big golfer, and often golfed in Hawai‘i with his friend Anderson. Crosby was aware Anderson had written Mele Kalikimaka, and left it at that. He wanted to surprise his friend by recording his song, but the favor turned out to be even bigger than Anderson could have imagined. Crosby recorded Mele Kalikimaka, as a surprise, without Anderson’s knowledge, as an alternate Christmas song on the flip side of the second recording of, of all things, “White Christmas”.

Here’s the whole story: Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” was introduced by Crosby in the 1942 film “Holiday Inn”, and won the Best Song Oscar. It was first recorded later in 1942, and became a recording phenomenon, to the extent that, in time, the recording master wore out. It was rerecorded in the late 1940’s, copying the original as closely as possible, and it is this second recording that we always hear today, and which had Mele Kalikimaka (1949) on its flip side. Listen to Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters in 1950 singing “Mele Kalikimaka”. (At 2:22 note the view down Waikiki Beach with the iconic image of Diamond Head in the background.)

The Language Today   Literacy in Hawaiian was high during the 19C when Hawai‘i was an independent kingdom. After annexation of Hawai‘i by the US in 1899, that same old story heard elsewhere appears—the Hawaiian language was banned from public use and went into a rapid decline. By the 1980’s there were only about 2,000 speakers left, mostly elderly. Then, in 1978 Hawaiian was made an official language of Hawai‘i along with English (think of the irony that it took so long, but those were the times—think Welsh, Gaelic, Catalan, American Indian languages, and so many more). Since then, there has been a revival of interest, and Hawaiian is now taught in schools. Today there are about 8,000 speakers of Hawaiian.

The smallish island of Ni‘ihau west of Kaua‘i, which has been privately owned by the Robinson family since 1864 and does not welcome visitors, has a high concentration of native Hawaiian speakers, and it’s the only island where Hawaiian comes first in use and English second.

But visitors who pay attention will be surprised at the extent Hawaiian has influenced English in Hawai‘i. Obviously, visitors will recognize the greeting “aloha”, although that usually goes too far. On the ship I took, Pride of America, you could tell that employees had been told to greet passengers all the time using that word, which belittled it for those who care about things like that. It’s like saying “I know you’re a tourist, and I’m trying to impress you”. It reached the point that, when a shipboard employee would say hello to me, I thanked them for NOT saying aloha, and we’d both have a laugh.

But to thank people, you do say mahalo quite frequently. Signs will say something like “mahalo for not littering”, for instance. The word haole comes up with some frequency for a foreigner, or outsider, and not only for people. You can have haole plants and haole animals. I remember picking up a Honolulu newspaper at breakfast one day and reading that parents should teach their keiki thus and so, so I learned a new word on the spot. The point is, local English speakers already possess this extended vocabulary.

When looking for a restroom, it is advised to learn whether you are a kane or wahine if you want to avoid embarrassment. Sometimes it’s marked in English, sometimes with picture icons, sometimes in Hawaiian, and sometimes with a combination of two of these. But I’ve seen it just in Hawaiian more than once. (These words were mentioned in the song “My Little Grass Shack”.) I’ll just say here that I go through the door that says “kane”.

You will see the word kapu everywhere. My first encounter this trip was when I was on the ‘Iolani Palace grounds in Honolulu and went up to a bandstand that was cordoned off, with a sign saying something like KAPU! For ceremonial use only! Driving to South Point on the Big Island you go through government lands marked KAPU! Do not drive off road! Every building site is marked KAPU! You get the point. It’s said that Captain Cook in 1777 noted this Polynesian word as tabu in Tongan, and today it appears in Tahitian and Maori as tapu (stress all of these on the first syllable: TA.bu, TA.pu, KA.pu). But on these signs, you certainly wouldn’t translate it as “taboo”. What would you choose? Keep Off (the bandstand)? Keep Out (of the government grounds)? Do Not Enter? No Admittance? You can again see that good translation is more than knowledge, it’s a game of style.

Note that a visitor to Hawai‘i has to be careful about names, due to the small number of sounds in the language. I kept on joking to myself that all streets seem to start with K. In Waikiki alone, these are major streets: Kapiolani Blvd crosses Kalakakua Ave, then Kuhio Ave takes off; it then ends at Kapahulu Ave. The other problem I found was not a sound, but a word: wai. It means “water”, so you will not be surprised that many place names on an island include it, notably Waikiki and even Hawai‘i itself. But as I drove around O‘ahu I passed Waimanalo, Waikane, Waimea. And then, in busy traffic, the road divided; did I want to take the fork to Waialua or the one to Waipahu? Help!

To me the most charming pair of Hawaiian words used in everyday English in the islands is makai and mauka. They are charming because they reflect an island culture—such words would never have developed on the mainland. At first I confused the two, but then I realized to divide them properly kai means sea, as in the well-known place name Hawai‘i Kai, and makai means “toward the sea”, or “on the sea side”. Uka means “inland, the upland, the mountain area”, and mauka means “toward the inland mountains”. These words are not specific like north or south, but depend on where you are, like left and right. On the south side of an island, makai is south, but on the north side, it’s north, and mauka varies in the same way.

Directions are regularly given in English using these words: “Where Kuhio takes off from Kalakaua, the restaurant will be mauka, but your hotel will be makai.” Get used to all this so you won’t seem like such a haole. After all, it isn’t kapu to learn something new. You want to know more than the local keiki, and at least as much as any kane or wahine you see on the street, right? And mahalo for listening. Aloha.