Hawaiian language

“ It was these American missionaries who first reduced the Hawaiian language to writing, established schools and taught the natives. As a result of their work, the Hawaiians are the most generally educated people, in the elementary sense, in the world. There is hardly a person in the islands, above the age of eight years, who cannot read and write. In spite of education, however, many of the ancient superstitions still exist, and some of the old stone temples are yet standing. What the United States will do with these heathen temples remains to be seen. ”

“ One of the difficulties in the clearing up of the foggy chapters of the history of the Hawaiian islands is that within the lifetime of men who were young at the close of the last century, the Hawaiian tongue became a written language, and made the traditions of savages highly colored stories, in various degrees according to ignorance, prejudice and sympathy, accepted as historical. ”

“ Now, the real body of Hawaiian folklore belongs to no isolated group, but to the whole Polynesian area. From New Zealand through the Tongan, Ellice, Samoan, Society, Rarotongan, Marquesan, and Hawaiian groups, fringing upon the Fijian and the Micronesian, the same physical characteristics, the same language, customs, habits of life prevail; the same arts, the same form of worship, the same gods. And a common stock of tradition has passed from mouth to mouth over the same area. In New Zealand, as in Hawaii, men tell the story of Maui's fishing and the theft of fire. ”

“ MYTHS AND MELES
ative Hawaiians—big, generous, happy, good-looking folk, athletic and fond of music—are in physical characteristics, in temperament, in language, traditions and customs, so closely related to the Samoans, the Maoris of New Zealand, and the other inhabitants of Polynesia, that it is clear they belong to the same race. Although Hawaii is two thousand miles from any other land, the people are so much like the natives of the South Sea Islands that I do not see how the relationship can be questioned. ”

“ Hence the vowel sounds greatly predominate over the consonant. The language may therefore appear monotonous to one unacquainted with its force.
In Hawaiian there is a great lack of generic terms, as is the case with all uncultivated languages. No people have use for generic terms until they begin to reason and the language shows that they were better warriors and poets than philosophers and statesmen. Their language, however, richly abounds in specific names and epithets.
The general rule, then, is that the accent falls on the penult ”

“ The sharing and learning will hopefully spark in our young students an interest in science and astronomy, and a drive to continue their education in reach of the stars. the College of Hawaiian Language is a leader not only in Hawaii, but across Native America. Many tribes are looking to UH Hilo for guidance in perpetuating their native language. ”

“ To acknowledge the 100th anniversary of the January 17, 1893 overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii, and to offer an apology to Native Hawaiians on behalf of the United States for the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii.
Whereas, prior to the arrival of the first Europeans in 1778, the Native Hawaiian people lived in a highly organized, self-sufficient, subsistent social system based on communal land tenure with a sophisticated language, culture, and religion ”

“ It is believed that in the progress of civilization the great mortality of the nation will be stayed. The experience in our own country does not encourage that hope. The degraded native seems to adopt the vices of the civilized race quite as soon as its virtues. In the old Kanaka language there was no oath, but these natives early acquired an education in profanity, and now mingle the English oath and the Hawaiian speech with considerable ease.
To speak of the civilization of the
Hawaiian people, is but following a priestly fashion and acknowledging the
existence of what is not. ”

“ The people were ranged under the immense roof in orderly ranks, the Tahitians being in one knot. Both the American elders were upon a platform, surrounded by the native elders, who aided in the conduct of the program, which was in Paumotuan. The Paumotuan language is a dialect closely allied to the Maori, which includes the Tahitian, Hawaiian, Marquesan, New Zealand, Samoan, and other island tongues. ”

“ The agency administers programs designed for the benefit of two subclasses of the Hawaiian citizenry. The smaller class comprises those designated as "native Hawaiians," defined by statute, with certain supplementary language later set out in full, as descendants of not less than one-half part of the races inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands prior to 1778. ”

“ Students of Hawaiian folk-lore find much of coincident interest with traditional or more historic beliefs of other and older lands. The same applies, in a measure, to some of the ancient customs of the people. This is difficult to account for, more especially since the Hawaiians possessed no written language by which such knowledge could be preserved or transmitted. Fornander and others discovered in the legends of this people traces of the story of the Flood, the standing still of the sun, and other narratives of Bible history, which some savants accept as evidence of their Aryan origin. ”

“ In the same manner the ng is a consonant sound in the Daya, Bugui and Batta dialects. It is the same in the Samoan; and although still retained in the Tonga, Hervey and New Zealand groups, it is but sparsely used and decreasing in frequency in the Tahiti, Paumotu and Marquesan groups, and disused entirely in the Hawaiian group; p and k being its general substitutes. [226]
Other indications of the relationship of the Polynesian and Aryan races are not wanting to those who are more competent than I am to pursue the comparison. ”

“ Here and there in the building, stages are set with splendid waxen Hawaiians engaged in olden pursuits, such as basket-weaving and poi-pounding. The figures, full-statured, are startlingly lifelike, except in the unavoidable deadness of the coloring. It is impossible to imitate the living hue, of which the natives say, “You can always see the blood of an Hawaiian under his skin.” ”

“ For one thing, all the peoples whose systems are characterized by the Hawaiian feature rank relatively high in the scale of civilization. No one would dream of placing the Maori culture below that of, say, the Fijians. Secondly, we have the most powerful circumstantial evidence from distinct quarters of the globe to prove that Hawaiian features develop secondarily within the Dakota scheme. Thus, among some Iroquois tribes, the tendency has developed to call the father’s as well as the mother’s sister ‘mother’. ”

“ Her poets never tired of depicting nature; sometimes, indeed, their art seems heaven-born. The mystery, beauty, and magnificence of the island world appealed profoundly to their souls; in them the ancient Hawaiian found the image of man the embodiment of Deity; and their myriad moods and phases were for him an inexhaustible spring of joy, refreshment, and delight.
GLOSSARY
The study of Hawaiian pronunciation is mainly a study of vowel sounds and of accent. Each written vowel represents at least two related sounds.
A (ah) has the Italian sound found in father, as in ha-le or in La-ka ”

“ As to the mask, the less said about that the better. People won't believe you: they'll say it's impossible. I believe you, because I understand Hawaiians down to the very ground: I know how skin-deep their civilization goes: but folks who don't, will think you're romancing. Besides, Kalaua wouldn't like it, of course. It's bad form to be a heathen in Hawaii. Whatever the natives may be in their own hearts, in their outer lives they prefer to be considered civilized Christians. There's nothing riles your true-born Hawaiian like a public imputation of cannibalism or heathendom. ”

“ The Polynesian is an ancient and primitive member of the Malay family. The New Zealand dialect is the most primitive and entire in its forms. The Hawaiians, Marquesans and Tahitians form a closely related group by themselves. For example, the Marquesan converts are using Hawaiian books and the people of the Austral Islands read the Tahitian Bible. ”

“ The word take, as expressing a nation or race, exists in other Polynesian dialects under the form of tae, tai or kai, which in the Marquesan itself is used interchangeably with the former. Thus we find Ani-tai and Ahee-tai for Anitake and Ahee-take. In the Tonga group tai is a common expression to designate a race, people or generation—Kai-Fiti, Viti people, Kai-Tonga, Tonga people, etc. In Hawaiian we find Kakai, a family including servants and dependents. ”

“ But the Maori is not the only branch of the race that retains this tradition of contact with a white race, for the Hawaiian history relates that Hawaii-loa, one of their great navigators, on one of his voyages apparently in Indonesia, brought back to his home two white men, poe keokeo kane, [4] who were married to his people. According to Fornander's genealogy this man appears to have flourished about A.D. 300, or whilst the Polynesians were probably on the move southwards towards Fiji. ”

“ That kuki is our own cook, as the Marquesans heard the sailors call him—cooky. Fae is house.
A pipe is paifa (pyfa) , and tobacco paké (pahkay) , rough pronunciations of the English words.
All through Polynesia the generic name among foreigners for a native is Kanaka, which is the Hawaiian word for man, or the human race. The Marquesan man is kenana or enata or enana, and woman vehine. The Tahitians and Hawaiians say taata or tane for man, and vahine or wahine for woman. The French word for Kanaka is canaque. This word is opprobrious or not according to the degree of civilization. ”

“ Lani-huli. The side of the valley Kilauea of Wai-oli toward which the river makes a bend before it enters the ocean.
Footnote 292: (return) Kau-ka-opua. Originally a phrase meaning “the cloud-omen hangs,” has come to be used as the proper name of a place. It is an instance of a form of personification often employed by the Hawaiians, in which words having a specific meaning—such, for instance, as our “jack-in-the-box”—have come to be used as a noun for the sake of the meaning wrapped up in the etymology. This figure of speech is, no doubt, common to all languages, markedly so in the Hawaiian. ”

“ That the memory of the northern Hawaii should in process of time, and after the cessation of this period of intercourse, have faded from the minds of southern chiefs and bards, or been confounded with that of the Samoan Sawaii, is natural enough; though I think it possible, were Tahitian, Tongan and Samoan legends—if yet existing—properly compared with each other and with the Hawaiian, that many proofs may yet be drawn from that side of the frequent intercourse, hostile, or friendly, of those days between the northern and southern groups of the Pacific. ”

“ While human nature everywhere shares in this weakness, the tendency seems to be greater in the Hawaiian than in some other races of no higher intellectual and esthetic advancement.
Another quality of the Hawaiian character which reenforces this tendency is their spirit of communal sympathy. That is but another way of saying that they need the stimulus of the crowd, as well as of the occasion, even to make them keep step to the rhythm of their own music. In all of these points they are but an epitome of humanity. ”

“ Thus, on New Zealand testimony, Hema, Kahai, Wahieloa and Laka were chiefs of Hawaiki or Sawaii in the Samoan group, and not of Hawaii in this group. These names and their pedigrees must then have been carried from Hawaiki to Tahiti and from Tahiti to this group, unless we assume a direct settlement from Hawaiki to Hawaii.
It is true, certainly, that the Hawaiian legends ascribe a local habitation as well as a name to each of these four chiefs, either on Maui, Oahu or Kauai, and places and monuments connected with their names are existing to this day ”

“ The hall-mark of Hawaiian music is rhythm, for the Hawaiians belong to that class of people who can not move hand or foot or perform any action except they do it rhythmically. Not alone in poetry and music and the dance do we find this recurring accent of pleasure, but in every action of life it seems to enter as a timekeeper and regulator, whether it be the movement of a fingerful of poi to the mouth or the swing of a kahili through the incense-laden air at the burial of a chief. ”

“ Centuries have passed; Hiku and Kawelu no longer exist on this plane of action, but whilst the [103] Hawaiian race endures will live the story of their love, and the spectral past with its warriors and gods, and its warm love and worship and song and story will ever be brilliantly reflected in their hearts. The lovers lived to a mellow old age, ever faithful to each other, blessed with a numerous offspring, from whom the kings of Hawaii claimed descent. ”

“ His passion was open and honorable. To the praise of the Hawaiian race, be it recorded, that no white woman ever received other than courtesy at their hands. Rich or poor, alone among thousands of natives, they and theirs with no other protection than their own virtue, have ever been, not only respected, but cared for, and to a certain extent venerated. ”

“ The world surges in on the Hawaiian Islands. And the Hawaiian can no longer give himself solely to the tradition that bound him to the valleys and the mountains, and that knit him to Wakea and Papa, who begat and brought forth the islands and the men and women upon them. ”

“ The passengers on the running boards made merry way for the haole wahine, while a beaming Hawaiian, a gentleman if ever was one, gave me his seat, raising a garlanded hat. The people made a kaleidoscope of color—white women in evening gowns and fluffy wraps, laughing Hawaiian and hapahaole girls in gaudy holokus and woolly crocheted “fascinators,” the native men sporting brilliant leis of fresh flowers, the most characteristic being the ilima, which, strung on thread, forms an orange-hued inch-rope greatly affected for neck garlands and hat bands. ”