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The Hawaiian names for the glottal stop are ʻuʻina (literally ‘snap”) and ʻokina (‘break’). The possibility of confusing the apostrophe representing the Hawaiian glottal stop with the apostrophe representing the English possessive is almost nil. Newspapers in Hawaiʻi today are beginning to use the ordinary apostrophe, which is quite acceptable.
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Churchward’s Tongan grammar (1953) and dictionary (1959) use a reversed apostrophe. Pratt’s Samoan dictionary of 1862 uses the reversed apostrophe, as do later religious works in Samoan. A reversed apostrophe was apparently first used in Hawaiian by Judd, Pukui, and Stokes in 1943. In early Hawaiian works, such as the translations of the bible and the early grammars ad dictionaries, the glottal stop was indicated by an apostrophe in such important words as koʻu ‘mine’ and kou ‘yours’. Here’s a relevant section from Elbert and Pukui’s Hawaiian Grammar (1979) What would the English pronunciation be? If you know the French, you do your best to use it. For example, while it certainly sounds affected to use the French pronunciation of “Paris” when referring to the city, one would stumble trying to use a non-French pronunciation of “Chartres”. I know there have been discussions here before about whether to refer to places with their local names or their names in the language one is using (not to mention the discussions of what right a place has to determine its own name in foreign tongues–hello, Ukraine!) but it strikes me that we tend to employ a double standard. The trouble is that most people will omit the ‘okina when searching for reference to the state or island of Hawai‘i, but the ‘okina is rather ubiquitous in other (often longer) Hawaiian place names, and omitting it there cause greater confusion. I need to decide once and for all where to use the ‘okina in my spelling of Hawaiian names and then do a systematic cleanup of my blog and photoblog.
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If only natives can get away with v-ing the w (it strikes me that the true sound is somewhere between the sounds of these consonants in English), what of we haoles who occasionally utter Hawai‘i’s ‘okina? I don’t refer to Norway as “Norge” in English speech, so why am I inclined to say Hawai‘i the way it’s said by natives and kama‘ainas? Is it plain obnoxious affectation? Surely he didn’t simply make it up could he have misunderstood something he read? I await enlightenment from Those Who Know.
Hawaiian okina vs samoan how to#
His conclusion that “as a diacritical mark in an English context, the mark seems largely out of place” is unexceptionable what bothers me is his explanation that the mark is “called an okina, ‘u’ina, or hamzah ).” Setting aside the odd use of the Arabic term hamzah in this context (Garner didn’t invent it, as you can tell by googling, but I fail to see how it clarifies anything for anybody) and the fact that the word okina should itself begin with an okina if you’re being accurate, can it possibly be the case that ‘u’ina is pronounced like okina? I want to say “No, that’s silly,” but Garner not only says so, he makes a point of it later (“look at ‘u’ina itself-most speakers would be at a loss how to say it”-speakers of English, I presume he means). Along with sections on Sense (the state or the Big Island?) and Pronunciation (only people actually living there can get away with using a v), there is one called “Spelled Hawai’i” that features the Hawaiian diacritic called the okina (discussed here). I was flipping through Garner’s Modern American Usage when my eye caught on the surprisingly long entry on Hawaii.