And then there are the complex, cultural concepts that can’t be easily translated into English - kuleana and lokahi and na’au. Words dealing with food, home, people - these things in the immediate surroundings - these are the words I recognize. Hawaiian has seeped into my brain quite gradually. Hawaiian is best-preserved in everyday vocabulary like food: niu (coconut), pa’akai (salt), pua’a (pig), wai (water), ahi (tuna). She runs through the vocabulary of the lesson, all food-related. Ten years have passed since I last visited the Big Island, and I’m watching video lessons on Youtube. I was never interested in learning Hawaiian until recently, and now I find myself here in Sweden in a tiny apartment - nearly 7,000 miles away from the islands - trying to get a grasp on it. And when I turned 19, I left the islands and have only been back twice. Throughout my childhood, I absorbed Hawaiian only in snippets and phrases. Hawaiian never ended up being a part of my upbringing until my family moved back to the Big Island when I was 9 years old - but even then, the lingua franca was still English or at best, the local Pidgin. For the first decade of my life, I lived abroad in Riyadh and spoke English while at home and to my neighbors. So I didn’t have the exposure to Hawaiian that my mother and her family had. I was a Third Culture Kid, was born in California and moved to Saudi Arabia before finally settling in Hawaii. “ ‘ Olelo Hawai’i ’oe?… Do you speak Hawaiian?”Īlthough I am Hawaiian, I didn’t grow up in Hawaii. Not bad for a Hawaiian learning Hawaiian. The most difficult part for me is knowing where to place the long vowels and the glottal stop - but for the most part, I zip through the lessons without many problems. In my lap, I keep a language notebook where I jot down grammar notes, spelling, and vocabulary. The goal is to get the learner to speak some basic Hawaiian straight away and to construct conversations as quickly as possible. The video series is easy to listen to and it moves slowly enough so that I don’t have to pause.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |