Image by bibianagonzalez from Pixabay

No, I am not going to or returning from Hawaii! I have no vacation photos and no souvenirs.

But I did want to talk about the Hawaiian language…

A number of states have established English as the only official language on a state level, while other states recognize English alongside native languages. Some states don’t recognize any official language. 30  states have made English the only official language, while Hawaii recognizes Hawaiian alongside English. South Dakota recognizes Sioux as well as English, and Alaska has over 20 official native languages.

Alphabet and Pronunciation:  The Hawaiian alphabet has only 13 letters, the five vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and seven consonants (h, k, l, m, n, p, w) plus the Okina’, a glottal stop symbolized by a backwards apostrophe. Grammar: The language lacks a verb for “to be” and doesn’t conjugate verbs for person or number, but does use tense to indicate time.  Words and Phrases: Basic words like aloha (hello/goodbye) and mahalo (thank you) are well-known; other words include keiki (child), wahine (women), kane (men), lanai (balcony/patio), and  ʻōpala (trash). So that’s where lanai comes from!!!  English is the most commonly spoken language in Hawaii,  used by roughly 75 percent  of the population as their primary language. However, due to its status as a cultural melting pot, several other languages are also prevalent, including Tagalog, Ilocano, Japanese, and the Hawaiian creole known as Pidgin.  Hawaiian is easier to learn than English! 

Only 13 letters

Consistent Pronunciation: Consistent vowel sounds and the lack of silent letters make it relatively easy to sound out Hawaiian words once you learn the rules.  Simple Grammar: Hawaiian grammar follows a logical structure: verb-subject-object sentence order and tense markers (like our helping verbs) rather than verb changes to indicate number or person.  But there are challenges! Lack of Cognates: Unlike languages like Spanish, there are very few “sister” words between Hawaiian and English, requiring learners to memorize a large amount of new vocabulary.  The ʻOkina (Glottal Stop): A unique consonant, the ʻokina (represented by a single quote mark), signals a brief pause and requires practice for English speakers to master its pronunciation.  Distinct Grammar:While logical, the grammar is fundamentally different from English. For example, there’s no direct equivalent for the verb “to be,” and adjectives follow the nouns they modify.

When British explorer James Cook made the first known European expedition to the Hawaiian islands in 1778, he spelled the islands’ name as both “Owhyhee” and “Owhyee.” At this time, Hawaiian was purely an oral language; its written form wasn’t formalized until American missionary Elisha Loomis printed a primer titled simply The Alphabet in 1822. This written alphabet initially consisted of 21 letters before being standardized in 1826, although four of the original letters (F, G, S, and Y) were included only for the purpose of spelling foreign words. Other letters — B, R, T, and V — were removed because they were considered interchangeable with existing letters.

By 1834, Hawaii’s literacy rate was estimated to be between 90% and 95%, one of the highest in the world at the time. However,  the Hawaiian language declined in usage after 1896, when Act 57 of the Laws of the Republic of Hawaii made English the language of instruction for all schools, after which schoolchildren were sometimes even punished for speaking Hawaiian. The language has seen a resurgence since the 1970s, with several groups working toward preserving it.