Ōlelo Hawaiʻi
Language Facts:
Speakers: ~8,000 total speakers, accurate number hard to verify.
Family: Polynesian
Status: Severely Endangered (UNESCO)
Family: Polynesian
Status: Severely Endangered (UNESCO)
Script: Latin
- Resources to learn Hawaiian are not very extensive, a few older textbooks and support on a couple of apps.
- Hawaiian has a very small inventory of consonants, only 8. There are 5 vowels, which can be both short or long. In addition, the glottal stop (written as an apostrophe ‘ ) is a major component of the phonology of Hawaiian.
- Hawaiian uses a verb-subject-object word order.
- Hawaiian is very analytic, and most words don’t change based on grammatical function.
- Like some other Austronesian languages, like Indonesian, Hawaiian uses an inclusive and exclusive “we”. So a separate word for “we” is used when it includes the listener, and a different form when it does not.
Learn Hawaiian:
Books:
Ka Lei Ha’aheo: Beginning Hawaiian – an older but good introduction to the Hawaiian language. Some audio for the book may be available online, but the full set might be hard to track down.
Podcasts:
Online:
Duolingo – has a course in Hawaiian. Good for absolute beginners.
Mango Languages– course in Hawaiian. Good audio and conversation based.
r/olelohawai’i – subreddit dedicated to Hawaiian language learning.
Ulukau Libary – Resource with many PDFs of older books on Hawaiian language learning and Hawaiian culture.
Courses:
Hawaiian Media:
Building Hawaiian Language Capacity – 35 minute documentary on Hawaiian teaching, with English subtitles
OiwiTV – Youtube channel with live performances, interviews, news and more.