When Captain Cook first visited the Hawaiian Islands, Hawaiian was a spoken language but not a written language. Historical accounts were passed down orally, through chants and songs.
After western contact and attempts to write about Hawaii, early writers tried to spell words based on the sound of the words they heard. People heard words differently, so it was not uncommon for words to be spelled differently, depending on the writer.
The planning for the formal written Hawaiian language in the early part of the nineteenth century was started by the American Protestant missionaries who arrived in Hawai‘i, starting in 1820.
A committee of some of these missionaries (Hiram Bingham, C. S. Stewart and Levi Chamberlain) worked on the development of the Hawaiian alphabet. (Hiram was my great-great-great grandfather)
Bingham noted, “To make the spelling and reading of the language easy to the people, and convenient to all who use it, was a matter of great importance, almost indispensable to our success in raising the nation.”
“It was, therefore, a part of our task to secure to the people a perfect alphabet, literal or syllabic, of all the sounds which were then in use, and which would need soon to come into use in the progress of the nation.”
“Those who had attempted to write the names of places and persons in the islands, had materially failed, even in the most plain and common. No foreigner or native, at the islands, could illustrate or explain the peculiarities and intricacies of the language.”
“[W] we found the dialect in use by foreigners often materially misled us, so that none could be trusted as to accuracy; and it required time to detect and unlearn errors.”
“In the oft recurring names of the principal island, the largest village, and of the king of the leeward islands, ‘Owhyhee’ [Hawai‘i], ‘Hanaroorah’ [Honolulu] and ‘Tamoree’ [Kaumuali‘i], scarcely the sound of a single syllable was correctly expressed, either in writing or speaking, by voyagers or foreign residents.”
“Had we, therefore, followed the orthography of voyagers, or in adopting an alphabet, made a single vowel stand for as many sounds as in English, and several different vowels for the same sound, and given the consonants the ambiguity of our c, s, t, ch, gh, & c …”
“… it would have been extremely difficult, if not impracticable to induce the nation to become readers, in the course of a whole generation, even if we had been furnished with ample funds to sustain in boarding-schools, all who would devote their time and labor to study.” (Bignham)
On July 14, 1826, the committee prepared a final report to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions titled “Report of the committee of health on the state of the Hawaiian language.” The report is signed by Hiram Bingham and Levi Chamberlain.
“Aiming to avoid an ambiguous, erroneous, and inconvenient orthography, to assign to every character one certain sound, and thus represent with ease and exactness the true pronunciation of the Hawaiian language, the following five vowels and seven consonants have been adopted: a, e, i, o, u, h, k, I, m, n, p, w.”
“These twelve letters, and possibly eleven, omitting either u or w, will express every sound in the pure Hawaiian dialect. The power of the vowels may be thus represented: – a, as a in the English words art, father; e, as a in pale, or ey in they; i, as ee or i in machine – o, as o in no; u, as oo in too. They are called so as to express their power by their names – Ah, A, He, O, Oo.”
“The consonants are in like manner called by such simple names as to suggest their power, thus, following the sound of the vowels as above – He, Ke, La, Mu, Nu, Pi, We.”
“The following appeared sometimes to be interchangeable: b and p, k and t, l and r, v and w, and even the sound of d, it was thought by some, was used in some cases where others used k, l, r, or t. For purely native words, however, k, l, p, and w were preferred.”
“The slight variation in quantity, though not in quality, of sound in the vowels requires no mark of distinction, any more than in the variation of the sound of a in the English words art and father. Here the quantity may differ slightly though it is not necessary to put a distinctive mark, or make a different character.”
“In the few dipthongal combinations ae, ai, ao, and au, whether more close or more open, each letter retains its original mono-sound. A-i, when sounded in quick succession, resemble the sound of the English pronoun I, and a~u, in quick succession, the sound of the English on in loud; so the Hawaiian word Jiau (hibiscus) resembles the full, round, English interrogative how.”
“In the name of the island, second in size in the group, whether pronounced Mau-i or Ma-u-i, there is no such difference as to cause a mistake in a native hearer.”
“Consonants are not doubled, and never end a word or syllable.”
“Double or triple vowels are never used to express a single sound, and where they occur, are sounded separately, as a-a, e-e, i-i y o-o, u-u. The accent being generally on the former, the latter is a sort of echo, as in the name Ha’-a-li-li-o’, but sometimes the reverse, as Ka-a’-hu-ma’-nu.”
“The convenience of such an alphabet for the Hawaiian language, undisturbed by foreign words, is very obvious, because we can express with simplicity, ease, and certainty, those names and phrases with the sound of which former voyagers were utterly unable to make us acquainted by English orthography.”
“Though it were possible to spell them with our English alphabet it would still be inconvenient. A few names may illustrate the reasons for our new orthography.” (Bingham)
One of the examples Bingham uses is the spelling (and pronunciation) of the chain’s main northern Island. There continues to be discrepancy in how it is spelled and pronounced; but Bingham makes it pretty simple – Kauai is pronounced ‘Cow-eye’ or ‘Kau ai’. (Bingham)
As Bingham concludes, “It could hardly be possible to write any language in the world with a more simple or limited alphabet, and at the same time equally intelligible to the children who use it.”
“A syllabic alphabet of ninety-five characters would have been tolerably convenient for all native words, but not so simple or convenient as the alphabet adopted.” (Bingham)
The Hawaiian language uses two special diacritical marks. The kahakō (‘macron’ consisting of a horizontal line over the vowel) lengthens the pronunciation of the vowel on which it is placed. The ‘okina ( ʻ – glottal stop) signifies a clean break between two vowels.
Planning for the written Hawaiian language and development by the missionaries was modeled after the spoken language, attempting to represent the spoken Hawaiian sounds with English letters.
Interestingly, these same early missionaries taught their lessons in Hawaiian, rather than English. In part, the mission did not want to create a separate caste and portion of the community as English-speaking Hawaiians. In later years, the instruction, ultimately, was in English.
The alphabet of 1826 has stood the test of time.
(Here’s a handy link to translate Hawaiian words: https://wehewehe.org/gsdl2.85/cgi-bin/hdict?l=en)
(Another side note … If using Word and you don’t have Hawaiian fonts, you can find the ʻokina and kahakō in Word by using the “Insert” (typically top/left in the tool bar,) then “Symbol” (typically far right,) then “More Symbols.”)
(We use Character code 02BB from Unicode (hex) for the ʻokina and Character code 0304 from Unicode (hex) for the kahakō. Word allows you to create shortcut keys by assigning keys for repeated use. We use Ctrl ~ for the ʻokina and Alt ~ for the kahakō.)
