source: pixabay.com (bibianagonzalez)
It’s been a while since I last used Hawaiian, so there’s plenty of brush work and sanding the floor ahead of me. As a brief recap, I studied Hawaiian at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa for 2 years, which included an intensive language course over summer with prompt daily 7am starts. The result was I ended up in advanced classes after 600 hours. Since 2016, I’ve occasionally dabbled in the language, spending no more than say 50 hours maintaining the language. I’m probably a rusty B1 at the moment on the CEFR scale, but would like to be able to play with the big boys and girls at a more solid B2 level.
Speaking: My last real foray into Hawaiian was during a third/fourth year university class entitled “Advanced Hawaiian Conversation”. I’d aced all the prerequisites to rise up the ranks over past semesters alongside people half my age (I was the old white haole guy in the funny hat – “psst…eh brah…check out da Ozzie!”). This last class was pretty intense. I’d chatted with mānaleo (native speakers) from Niʻihau and other islands in supplementary conversation classes, community events, and social get-togethers, and even taught Hawaiian in local elementary schools on a couple of occasions, but this was another level altogether. I think the class started off with about 16 happy campers, and by the end of the course, there were only 4 hardcore hikers left standing at the sheer face of this cliff (including me). I think one of them worked for ʻAha Pūnana Leo as a native Hawaiian teacher of the language, while the others seemed to rise effortlessly to the surface like great stoic sea turtles in advanced waters. Nevertheless, I held my own and completed the course. We discussed graduate level grammar topics, got into heated debates on geopolitical affairs, and transcribed scratchy tapes of toothless octogenarians lifted from reels of tape recorded in the 70s. And while, on the surface, I seemed relatively unflustered and spontaneous in conversation, on the inside, where the real action took place, lots of cute little furry creatures scurried around in frantic circles, waving their arms about in mad panic and pressing colorful random buttons. So it would be great to reach a more comfortable and fluent level in speaking by the end of my next Hawaiian project, if only to give the guys on the inside a chill pill.
Pronunciation: I’ve been told more than once that I sound like a Rasta when I speak Hawaiian. Personally I don’t hear it myself, but there you go. Maybe it’s because I’m half Irish (lots of similarities in phonology, believe it or not!), or maybe it’s because that’s simply my inner irie island voice. Who knows?? I always take this as a compliment though, as Jamaican patois is my favorite sounding form of communication in the known cosmos and people love reggae and roots music over here. However, yes, I’m well aware that I need to work on my pronunciation, particularly given that there are a mere 13 phonemes in the language to tame – no excuses already – Jah know!!
Listening: This is my weakest skill without a doubt – no big surprise there. The sad truth is that quality listening material and proficient native speakers, even proficient L2 speakers, are relatively sparse, even on Oʻahu. And I wish I could settle back on the sofa to a fun Hawaiian language tv series at the end of the day, or fill my fancy Bluetooth headphones with a variety of gripping podcasts i ka ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi over the weekend, but you just have to work with what’s available.
Reading: I’ve bought a tonne of books in Hawaiian – practically anything I could lay my hands on locally or order over Amazon. Some of these are massive weighty tomes such as “The Epic Tale of Hiʻiakaikapoliopele” and “ʻŌlelo noʻeau: Hawaiian Proverbs & Poetical Sayings”, while others are small children’s picture books or translations of established classics such as “The Hobbit”, “The Little Prince”, and “The Wizard of Oz”. Unfortunately none of these are available on Kindle as far as I know, at least not yet, but please let me know if you do find any in your travels. And given the polysemy of a language with only 13 characters, looking up words online (and usually compound words at that) is far from trivial. Translations often resolve to dozens of meanings, more often than not including an extended family of never-before-seen aquatic creatures along with several types of seaweed, rain, wind, and/or crab. And don’t get me started on hidden and double meanings. I am however looking forward to reading Harry Potter (and any possible future installments by Keao NeSmith 😉 ) in the near future, even if horcruxes and death eaters don’t tend to come up in local conversation over a spam musubi or bowl of shave ice.
Writing: I’ve written a few full-length essays, given public speeches in Hawaiian, translated song lyrics from the 80s, and even subtitled and dubbed an amusing short animation into Hawaiian as a joint project for a Hawaiian festival. My grammar was pretty solid a few years ago, but I’ve let things slide, so I’ll probably need to review several concepts in my most dog-eared textbook when I start up again. For those who don’t know, Hawaiian has VSO (verb-subject-object) word order, employs a tricky possessive class system for nouns, and relies on a complex system of particles to determine tense, aspect, mood, and direction of verbal phrases. The language also boasts cool features such as inclusivity/exclusivity for pronouns and a third “dual” class for plurals. The biggest challenge however is that it strongly favors passive over active constructions, which takes some getting used to for an English speaker. So what I guess I’m trying to say here (and forgive me if I’ve said this before in other posts) is that Hawaiian is really unlike any other language I’ve ever studied before, not just in terms of syntax and grammar, but more importantly, in the way it paints, frames, and conceptualizes the world around it. And to a linguist and language nerd like me, I absolutely love it!
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