Linguists were unsure if Hawaiian and other endangered languages would survive. In 2001, native speakers of Hawaiian amounted to less than 0.1% of the statewide population. Hawaiian was essentially displaced by English on six of seven inhabited islands. King Kamehameha III established the first Hawaiian-language constitution in 18.įor various reasons, including territorial legislation establishing English as the official language in schools, the number of native speakers of Hawaiian gradually decreased during the period from the 1830s to the 1950s. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the US state of Hawaii. Hawaiian ( ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, pronounced ) is a Polynesian language of the Austronesian language family that takes its name from Hawaiʻi, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. The word Hawai'i, therefore, should be pronounced 'ha-vai-i.' I hope these examples gave you somewhat of an idea of how the language works and sounds, but I will include pronunciations to help you along.This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. In Hawaiian, every letter is pronounced, and the 'w's' in words make the same sound as a 'v' in English. For example, the word pau (pow) means 'done or finished.' However, when an 'okina is added in between the a and the u, it becomes pa'u (pah-oo) which means 'hula skirt.' Who knew something so small could make such a huge difference. It indicates a glottal stop which is basically a sharp pause in the word. The 'okina is the seemingly misplaced apostrophe in the middle or beginning of a word. The Hawaiian language has only 13 letters, one of which is the 'okina. I have compiled a list of the most useful and common Hawaiian words and phrases. As children, most people who grow up in Hawai'i have to take some kind of Hawaiian culture and language class which includes learning Hawaiian history, dancing hula, chanting traditional stories, singing cute little Hawaiian songs, doing traditional crafts, looking at petroglyphs, and visiting ancient Hawaiian heiau, or temples. Not very many people know everything about it, but people are trying their best to keep it alive. The Hawaiian language is a dying language.

Directioin of hawaiian okina