Blake and Deborah in Hawaii: Alphabet Kupa (Soup)

The Hawaiian language belongs to the family of Polynesian languages and has been developing since the first settlers arrived in the Hawaiian Islands around 400 A.D. It started to take a written form with the arrival of European explorers and their various languages in the late 18th century. Then the protestant missionaries arrived around 1820 and fully developed a Hawaiian alphabet so that they could translate the bible into the local language, preach in Hawaiian, and further their cause of converting all Hawaiians to Christianity. Unfortunately, thanks to introduced diseases, many of the native speakers were only converted to dead. For this and a variety of other reasons, the Hawaiian language diminished in use, and was even banned by law from public schools in 1896, as it was gradually displaced by English. In recent decades there has been more interest in preserving the Hawaiian language, but still only 0.1% of the total population are native speakers, and many of those are on the isolated island of Niihau.

The modern Hawaiian alphabet has only 12 letters: seven consonants (h,k,l,m,n,p,w), five vowels (a,e,i,o,u), plus a few special marks that indicate glottal stops or long vs. short vowels. And of course there are the diphthongs – my favorite grammatical term – which are basically pairs of vowels that are sort of smeared together. Our exposure to Hawaiian words – apart from the typical “aloha” and “mahalo” - is mostly limited to place names, which are almost all in Hawaiian. You'd think with only 12 letters it would be easy to remember such names, but it's actually harder because so many are so similar. So differentiating between the towns of Honokaa, Honomu, Honaunau, Honohina and Honuapo is a challenge. Same for Kealakekua, Keauhou and Kahaluu. Or there is Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park, which we recently visited, and which sounds a bit like both.

One way to compensate for lack of variety in letters is to just make the words really, really long. In this way you get the type of trigger fish known as Humuhumunukunukuapua'a, or the even more letter-populated fish name of lauwiliwilinukunuku‘oi‘oi. Easier to stick with Yellowfin Tuna, which in Hawaiian is known as “Ahi.” Much easier.

Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park

Kane and Wahine (Man and Woman)

A sea turtle (honu) makes for the sea

Deborah hiking the lava fields at Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park during one of the brief instances when her wind-blown hair wasn't completely covering her face.