Aloha on a Super Saturday on the way to a Shiny Sunday,

Hawaii is the only state with an official state language, Hawaiian. When the first missionaries arrived, take for example David and Sarah Lyman who landed in Hilo in 1839 from New England, they stayed in one-room grass huts and learned the language by listening to the native Hawaiians. There was no written language. David and others developed the written form of the speech that is used today, and they used the written words to translate the Old and New Testaments. Those missionaries were surprised how quickly the Hawaiians could memorize parts of and even the whole of the translated texts, which may not be that surprising when you realize the original language is an oral tradition in mnemonic form to remember the past. Our tour guide in O’ahu said his Hawaiian name tells the story of the men in his family back seven generations on his father’s side. The names of the women chronicle as far back, but on the mother’s side. As you might imagine, those are some very long names. The guide’s mission name is Taevita, which is the anglicized form in new Hawaiian of “David.”

20 years ago the Hawaiian language “was teetering on the brink of extinction.” I read that in one of the tour magazines. And, then it was saved. In 1984, Hawai’i began opening Hawaiian-language pre-schools, immersion schools and public charter schools all across the islands. The names on signs of streets, towns and establishments were changed to Hawaiian words. It is a full-fledged revival and everyone is speaking it, even the tourists. Mahalo, thank you.

The language itself is quite interesting. There are the five vowels (a, e, i, o, u), but only eight consonants (h, k, l, m, n, p, w, and ‘ for a glottal stop like the breath stop between “oh-oh”). That makes a total of only thirteen letters for the whole language. So, some words can get quite long to communicate the proper word picture from the more ancient spoken tradition. My favorite Hawaiian word is that for the state fish, “humuhumunukunukuapua’a.” From the pictures, it is a gorgeous little reef triggerfish with a name that must go back seven generations, at least.

Aloha a hui hou kakou, goodby until we meet again, and Maholo, thank you for stopping by,

Grandpa Jim