So in Kamehameha, the first “me” gets a slight emphasis while the second “me” receives the main emphasis. As for emphasis, it is usually the second to the last syllable that gets that honor. Unfortunately the ‘okina is often left out the “e” and “a” in Waimea are separate syllables but I don’t think I’ve ever seen Waimea with an ‘okina.Ī practice that can make a very long word more manageable is to look for repeated fragments, like King Kamehameha the two fragments are pronounced the same. It indicates a glottal stop, as in the word Hawai‘i (ha why′ e) or Honoka‘a (ho no ka′ a). The ‘okina, ‘, looks like a backwards apostrophe or a left single quote mark. But adjacent vowels are separate sounds if there’s an ‘okina (o kē′ na) between them. Sometimes two vowels sitting together make a different sound, like the ai in Waimea (why mā′ a). The pronunciation gets a little more complicated when two vowels sit next to each other. You might start making everything that has the “right” set of letters into a Hawaiian word, like hu ma′ ne, when you whiz by the Humane Society, a story shared by my friends, Kim and Thomas. This rule is easy to implement, but watch out. (As an aside, the word “Hawaiian” is not Hawaiian because the last syllable ends in a consonant!) So “mahalo” (thank you) is just as it looks, ma ha′ lo. Here’s a pronunciation rule that really helped me. But given that they were inventing this written language, I don’t understand why they decided to make the Hawaiian “i ” sound like “ee,” and “e” sound like “ay.” That left “a” to sound like what the doctor asks you to say when they put a stick down your throat. That’s because the American missionaries who arrived in 1820 had to devise an alphabet for the spoken Hawaiian language before they could print a bible. Most of the letters sound like their equivalent English letter. My friend, Dianne, lives in Paauhau, or is it Paauilo, Pahalo, Pahoa, Papaaloa, Papaikou, Pauka’a, Puueo, Puueo-Paku, or Puukapu, all communities on the Big Island’s east side? I’m a visual person, so it helps me to see the word written out, but that doesn’t happen in normal conversation. Community names are just as difficult for the auditory-challenged, like me. And sometimes that’s all you have – a glance as you whiz past street signs. Lots of Hawaiian words look alike on first glance.
The Hawaiians called them Paniolo because the Hawaiian language has no “s” sound and Hawaiian syllables always end with a vowel (see rule below). The first cowboys on the island were Españols, Spanish cowboys from California and Mexico.
When the first Europeans showed up, Hawaiians had difficulty “importing” new words that included letters and sounds not present in Hawaiian. So Hawaiian words often have multiple meanings. That’s not much to work with there are only so many ways to combine these letters to make new words. The Hawaiian language has only 13 letters: eight consonants (h, k, l, m, n, p, w and the ‘okina – more on that later) and five vowels (a, e, i, o, and u). Unfortunately, all I can address is pronunciation and word recognition that’s all I’ve learned so far. But I always think that a brief description of the Hawaiian language might be more useful to them. Of course, Aloha (hello, good-bye and so much more) and Mahalo (thank you) top the list. My visitors often ask me for some useful Hawaiian words.
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