Hawaiian is the ancestral language of the indigenous people of the Hawaiian Islands, the Hawaiians, a Polynesian people. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the State of Hawaiʻi. The ISO language code for Hawaiian is haw.
Hawaiian is a member of the Austronesian language family, most closely related to Polynesian languages like Marquesan, Tahitian, Sāmoan, Māori, and Rapanui (i.e., the language of Easter Island), as well as to other languages in the Pacific, like Fijian, and more distantly to Indonesian, Malagasy, and the indigenous languages of Taiwan and the Philippines.
Use of the language
Hawaiian is an endangered language. On six of the seven inhabited islands, Hawaiian was long ago displaced by English and is no longer used as the daily language of communication.
On the island of Niʻihau, where Hawaiian has never been displaced, the language has never been endangered, and is still used almost exclusively (see the Niihau section below).
For a variety of reasons starting around 1900, the number of native speakers of Hawaiian diminished from 37,000 to 1,000; half of these remaining are now in their seventies or eighties (see Ethnologue report below for citations).
There has been some controversy over the reasons for this decline.
One school of thought claims that the most important cause for the decline of the Hawaiian language was its voluntary abandonment by the majority of its native speakers. They wanted their own children to speak English, as a way to promote their success in a rapidly changing modern environment, so they refrained from using Hawaiian with their own children.
Another school of thought insists either that the government made the language illegal, or that schools punished the use of Hawaiian, or that general prejudice against Hawaiians (kanakas) discouraged the use of the language.
This controversy is discussed below.
Efforts to revive the language have increased in recent decades. Hawaiian language "immersion" schools are now open to children whose families want to retain (or introduce) Hawaiian language for future generations. The local NPR station features a short segment titled "Hawaiian word of the day." Additionally, the Sunday editions of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, one of Honolulu's two major newspapers, feature a brief article called Kauakukalahale written entirely in Hawaiian by a student.
When trying to learn Hawaiian as a second language, without a competent teacher and without native speakers of Hawaiian as models, English-speaking learners might mispronounce Hawaiian words by using English values for the letters. Also, learners might not be aware that one cannot simply replace the English words in an English sentence with Hawaiian words as a way to create a Hawaiian sentence. Hawaiian and English have important differences in the order of words in a phrase, and the order of phrases in a sentence
There is a certain tension between those who would revive a purist Hawaiian, as spoken in the early 19th century, and those who grew up speaking a colloquial Hawaiian shaped by more than one hundred years of contact with English and pidgin.
Hawaiian Pidgin (more properly described as an English-Hawaiian creole language) is a local language, derived mostly fom English but with its own unique syntax and phonology. Its vocabulary comes from English, Hawaiian, and Asian languages. The latter are predominantly Japanese and Cantonese, introduced by immigrants hired to work at sugar and pineapple plantations; but Philippine languages have made contributions as well. Often overlooked but also important are the contributions of European languages other than English, especially Portuguese.
Phonology
Hawaiian is notable for having a small phoneme inventory (see Hawaiian alphabet, below), like many of its Polynesian cousins. Especially notable is the fact that it does not distinguish between /t/ and /k/; few languages do not make that distinction. A [t] allophone of this phoneme was common at the Kauaʻi (Tauaʻi) end of the island chain, and a [k] allophone at the Big Island (island of Hawaiʻi) end. The American missionaries who developed written Hawaiian during the 1820s decided to use "k" rather than "t" to represent this phoneme. However, that does not prevent anyone from using the "t" realization, in speaking or in writing, if they so desire. "T" is used more than "k" is, by speakers of Niʻihau Hawaiian.
In addition to the variation between [t] and [k], the missionaries also found allophonic variation between [r] and [l], between [v] and [w], and between [b] and [p]. For each case, they considered what grapheme to use for the Hawaiian phoneme. They eventually decided to use "k", "l", "w", and "p", for the published Hawaiian which they produced. However, hundreds of words were very rapidly borrowed into Hawaiian from English, Greek, and Hebrew. Although these loan words were necessarily Hawaiianized, they often retained some "non-Hawaiian" letters in their published forms.
In discussing phonology, it is always important to distinguish clearly between: (1) written forms, (2) phonological forms, and (3) phonetic forms. For a particular word, it's possible for all three representations to be identical as to the written letters that are used. So for precision and clarity in writing, it is conventional to write phonological forms enclosed in slashes, and phonetic forms enclosed in square brackets. Ordinary (not phonological, not phonetic) written forms may be cited in double quotes.
For example, the Hawaiian word meaning "brain" is ordinarily written as "lolo". Its phonological representation is /lolo/ and its phonetic representation can be [lolo]. But it is also possible, for a particular word, to have all three representations using different written letters. For example, the Hawaiian word meaning "this" is ordinarily written as "keia" or "kēia". Its phonological form is /keeia/ and its phonetic form can be [tiə]. Another example is the (borrowed) Hawaiian word for "Bethlehem". Its ordinary written form is "Betelehema" or "Pekelehema", its phonological form is /pekelehema/, and its phonetic form can be [pεkεlεhεmə].
Consonants
The consonant phonemes of Hawaiian are shown in the following table:
The phoneme /w/ has two main allophones, [w] and [v] (a labiodental fricative). Their distribution has been described by Elbert and Pukui (1979, 12–13; Pukui and Elbert 1986, xvii) as follows:
- After /i/ and /e/ usually [v]
- After /u/ and /o/ usually [w]
- After /a/ and initially, free variation between the two
It is clear from their surrender to the use of the word "usually" that there is actually free variation of [w] and [v] in all phonological environments. Pukui and Elbert's brief descriptions of Hawaiian pronunciation, mainly limited to individual segments, have been strongly criticized by Schütz.
Vowels
The vowel phonemes are shown in the following tables:
| Diphthongs |
Ending with /i/ |
Ending with /u/ |
Ending with /e/ |
Ending with /o/ |
| Starting with /i/ |
|
iu |
|
|
| Starting with /e/ |
ei |
eu |
|
|
| Starting with /o/ |
oi |
ou |
|
|
| Starting with /a/ |
ai |
au |
ae |
ao |
It is not necessary to postulate that the long vowels and diphthongs are phonemes, because they can be treated as sequences of two vowels. They are in fact historically derived from two-syllable sequences. This is easily seen in the synchronic co-existence of allomorphic pairs of Hawaiian causative prefixes such as "ho`o-" with "hō-", and "ha`a-" with "hā-". Another example is the allomorphic pair "kolu" with "-kou", both meaning "three".
Both examples can be analyzed as a four-phoneme CVCV sequence alternating with a three-phoneme CVV sequence, where the CVV form is derived from the CVCV form through loss of the second consonant. In other words, [hoʔo] loses the [ʔ], resulting in [hoo] (written as "hō"), and [kolu] loses the [l], resulting in [kou]. "Kolu" is a root form, while "-kou" is found in the plural personal pronouns (indicating three or more referents) "mākou", "kākou", "`oukou", and "lākou".
When Hawaiian is considered to have only five vowel phonemes, then the overall phoneme count remains low at 13. But when the long vowels and diphthongs are considered to be separate phonemes, then the overall phoneme count is more than doubled, and the statement that Hawaiian is "notable" for having "a small phoneme inventory" is rendered false.
Syllable structure
Hawaiian syllables may contain zero or one consonants in the onset; unlike many languages, Hawaiian syllables with no onset contrast with syllables beginning with the glottal stop: /alo/ "front, face" contrasts with /ʔalo/ "to dodge, evade". Codas and consonant clusters are prohibited in Hawaiian words of Austronesian origin. The borrowed word "Kristo" is pronounced [kristo].
Orthography
Hawaiian is written in a variety of the Latin alphabet, called ka pīʻāpā Hawaiʻi in Hawaiian. It was developed by American missionaries during the 1820s.
| Aa |
Ee |
Hh |
Ii |
Kk |
Ll |
Mm |
Nn |
Oo |
Pp |
Uu |
Ww |
ʻ |
| /a/ |
/e/ |
/h/ |
/i/ |
/k/ |
/l/ |
/m/ |
/n/ |
/o/ |
/p/ |
/u/ |
/w/ |
/ʔ/ |
All the letters can have their IPA value in limited instances, but if one were to converse in Hawaiian with only 13 phones, the result would sound definitely foreign to the ear of a native speaker. The letter ʻ, called ʻokina, does not have any IPA value because it is not an IPA symbol. It is used to represent the phonemic glottal stop. Vowel length is marked by a macron (called kahakō) above the vowel, i.e. Āā Ēē Īī Ōō Ūū. The macron does not represent stress, although under the rules for assigning stress in Hawaiian, a long vowel will always receive stress.
The kahakō
The language makes use of a diacritical mark, the kahakō, represented by a macron over certain vowels.
The ʻokina
- Main article: ʻokina
The ʻokina is written as ʻ with the Unicode value ʻ (decimal ʻ), which does not always have the correct appearance because it is not supported in some fonts/browsers. (When not supported, it looks like an empty rectangle.) It is alternatively written as an opening single quote ‘ with the Unicode value ‘ (decimal ‘), which appears either as a left-leaning quote or a quote with greater thickness at the bottom than at the top. It can look like a very small "6" with the circle filled in black.
For examples of use of the ʻokina consider the word "Hawaiʻi", or "Oʻahu" (often simply "Hawaii" and "Oahu" outside Hawaiian English). In Hawaiian, these words can be pronounced (using IPA): [hə.ˈwəi.ʔi] and [o.ˈʔə.hu], and can be written with an ʻokina where the glottal stop is pronounced. (In English, the glottal stop is omitted, or is replaced by a non-phonemic glide, resulting in [hə.ˈwai.i] or [hə.ˈwai.yi], and [o.ˈa.hu] or [o.ˈwa.hu]. Note that the latter two are essentially identical in sound.)
There is nothing unique or strange about the glottal stops in Hawaiian. Many languages around the world have glottal stops. In Hawaiian, phonemic glottal stops are sort of like "dead consonants" because they are actually a "phonetically stripped down" final remnant of a "phonetically fuller" consonant that used to be there in an earlier form of the relevant word. This can be seen by comparing "lua", the root which means "two", with the various forms of the dual personal pronouns. The second person dual is "`olua", where the full form "-lua" is clearly evident. The third person dual is "lāua", where the "l" of "-lua" has completely disappeared, resulting in "-ua". A historically earlier form of "lāua" was /laalua/. The form /laalua/ no longer exists in Hawaiian, because native speakers have changed it to /laaua/. However, there still exists a form which is intermediate between the two: [laaʔua]. The written form "lā`ua" is not used, but the spoken form [laaʔua] is commonly used. So there is a historical sequence of forms: /laalua/ changes to /laaʔua/ changes to /laaua/. It's like the /l/ "dies" and disappears from that word. But it does not go directly from /l/ to nothing. Instead, it "lingers" for a time, in the reduced form /ʔ/. It's the same story with the first person duals: /maalua/ changes to /maaʔua/ changes to /maaua/, and /kaalua/ changes to /kaaʔua/ changes to /kaaua/. The written forms "mā`ua" and "kā`ua" are not used, but the spoken forms [maaʔua] and [kaaʔua] are commonly used by native speakers.
Niihau
The small island of Niihau, off the coast of Kauai, is the one island where Hawaiian is still spoken as the language of daily life. Reasons for the persistence include:
- Niʻihau has been privately owned for over 100 years;
- visitation by outsiders has been only rarely allowed;
- the Caucasian owners/managers of the island have favored the Niʻihauans' continuation of their language;
- and, most of all, because the Niʻihau speakers themselves have naturally maintained their own native language, even though they sometimes use English as a second language for school.
Native speakers of Ni`ihau Hawaiian have three distinct modes of speaking:
- an imitation and adaptation to "standard" Hawaiian;
- a native Niihau dialect that is significantly different than "standard" Hawaiian, including extensive use of palatalizations and truncations, and differences in diphthongization, vowel raising, and elision;
- a manner of speaking among themselves which is so different that it is unintelligible to non-Ni`ihau speakers of Hawaiian.
The last mode of speaking is rarely even heard by non-Niihauans.
The "Banning" of Hawaiian
The law cited as banning the Hawaiian language is identified as Act 57, sec. 30 of the 1896 Laws of the Republic of Hawaii:
- "The English Language shall be the medium and basis of instruction in all public and private schools, provided that where it is desired that another language shall be taught in addition to the English language, such instruction may be authorized by the Department, either by its rules, the curriculum of the school, or by direct order in any particular instance. Any schools that shall not conform to the provisions of this section shall not be recognized by the Department." [signed] June 8 A.D., 1896 Sanford B. Dole, President of the Republic of Hawaii
This law established English as the main medium of instruction for the government-recognized schools, but, technically speaking, it did not ban nor make illegal the Hawaiian language in other contexts. The law specifically addressed and allowed for the teaching of other languages.
Hawaiian-language newspapers were published for over a hundred years, right through the period of the supposed ban. Pukui and Elbert (1986:572) list fourteen Hawaiian newspapers. According to them, the newspapers entitled Ka Lama Hawaii and Ke Kumu Hawaii began publishing in 1834, and the one called Ka Hoku o Hawaii ceased publication in 1948. The longest run was that of Ka Nupepa Kuokoa: about 66 years, from 1861 to 1927.
See also
References
- Elbert, Samuel H.; Mary Kawena Pukui. Hawaiian Grammar, Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press.
- Pukui, Mary Kawena; Samuel H. Elbert. Hawaiian Dictionary, Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press.
- Schutz, Albert J.. The Voices of Eden: A History of Hawaiian Language Studies, Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press.
The content of this page is retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_language under GFDL
