It’s the U.S.’s 50th state and one of the most popular tropical vacation destinations
in the world. But how do you say its name?
Almost all the local town and street names are written in an alphabet of only - get this
- 13 letters. Most of them will be a cinch for you: a e i o u h k l m n p w ‘okina.
So that makes it easy: "havaii". Oh, but this little swishy at the end is actually a letter,
the same sound that hides in the middle of "uh-oh"! okay, so it’s "havai'i". I’ll
go try that out!
Turns out that wasn’t quite right. As I’m learning from these islands, this gets said
more like "uh-y", not so much "eye". Hhh, should’ve known it was too easy the first
time. Here we go: "huhvuhy-ee".
When you say it that way, you at least get the “hey, that’s not too bad!” reaction.
Alright, practice time. So I’ve learned that if you go snorkeling in "Havai‘i" you
might spot a kihikihi. And if you bring your underwater camera to this spot in Kailua-Kona
you can snap plenty of pics of the state fish, the humuhumunukunukuapua‘a. Oh, and this
breathtaking hike 10 miles east of Honolulu will take you straight up an old railroad
track to the top of Koko head. And if we pan over here a bit - there, there we go! - you
can catch a glimpse of the suburb below, which gets called Hawai'i Kai. "Hawai'i"... wait,
wasn’t that "Havai‘i"? Hold it. Which is it, [w] or [v]?
After checking back in on the local pronunciation, it turns out that it’s Ha[w]ai'i OR Ha[v]ai'i.
This kind of behavior once earned it the nickname “The Vexing Hawaiian w”. It’s a choice,
but you guys know about choices. Maybe the tomeyto ~ tomahto situation comes to mind?
There’s even a name for this: it’s called “free variation”. You say tomahto I say
tomeyto, he says Havai‘i she says Hawai‘i. I guess it’s just personal preference.
Not so fast! Back in 1958, in his paper “Social influences on the choice of a linguistic variant”,
John Fischer tells us that “free variation” is just a convenient term we use for a bunch
of under-the-radar influences on our pronunciation. Influences like the way other females or other
males say something when we're learning a language as children, which could be going
on here, too.
I noticed that, on the radio here when the dj's speaking faster, Hawai‘i gets cut even
shorter: "Hava'i", "Hawa'i".
But it’s not all pau hana yet. The music of the islands has one more on offer for us.
In a study on the different ways Hawaiian gets pronounced when people speak it versus
when they sing it, Joseph Keola Donaghy of UH-Hilo documents places where a famous musician
actually splits the word in two, singing "Háwa-í'i" when belting a tune.
Have you been keeping track so far? You came to me with Hawaii, and now I’ve found you
havai‘i and hawai‘i, hava’i and hawa‘i and even háwa.í‘i.
Okay, things got a little out of hand here. That’s a lot of answers to what started
out as a simple question! But, whatever you call this island chain, mahalo for taking
the time to learn with me.