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Hawaiian LanguageUntil the 1820's, Hawaiian was only a spoken language. In the 1820's the Calvinist missionaries from New England began to write down phonetically the Polynesian-based language. The Hawaiian language used only 12 letters. There are five vowels:
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The seven consonants are H, K, L, M, N, P, and W. You may hear the "W" pronounced like a "V", this happens when the W is the second to the last letter of the word, but there are exceptions. Hawaii is not one of them. Vowels may follow each other but consonants are always followed by a vowel, creating syllables with only two letters. Words never end in a consonant and because there is no "S" in the Hawaiian language, nouns are not pluralized. Sometimes you will see a word spelled with an apostrophe() between two vowels, as in Ali'i. This is called an "okina", the glottal stop, and creates an abrupt break in the word, such as "oh-oh". The second to the last syllable is usually stressed. If there are only two syllables, the last one receives the emphasis. |
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Basic Hawaiian Words and Phrases
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