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Aloha,
Let’s talk about kahako and okina, and why I don’t perpetuate or encourage them.
They are both considered diacritics - “a mark to give a letter a particular phonetic value.”
Their purpose is to help with pronunciation.
Initially, I didn’t learn the language with these diacritics. I started out with a bunch of old books and they didn’t make use of those markings. (Kahako and okina hadn’t been created yet.)
The way I learned to pronounce words was through listening to living native speakers and native speakers on recordings or videos.
In college, I realized that everyone used kahako and okina - but their pronunciation was terribly poor. They didn’t sound anything like the speakers I was listening to, which was surprising at first, but became disheartening.
I finally made my decision about using them or not when I had a conversation with a native speaker woman from Niihau. She told me that she didn’t use these diacritics. She also said that all of her ancestors up until her, never used them. I was receiving great instruction from a native speaker’s wealth of knowledge at that moment.
Since then, I have become even more confident in learning the language without using them. This is the orthography and language my ancestors used and perpetuated.
Should you use kahako and okina?
My thoughts are, if the purpose of kahako and okina is to help with pronunciation but those who use kahako and okina don’t resemble native speakers - then I guess it depends on your end goal and what kind of Hawaiian you want to learn and perpetuate. I’m not opposed to having diacritics in dictionaries, even English dictionaries have them.
Think about this, how will a 2nd language learner know that the “p” in psychology is silent on paper? They can’t. They have to hear it or learn to read English diacritics in the dictionary. (Almost no one does the latter.) No one writes with diacritics in English, why are so many writing with them in Hawaiian? We have thousands of hours worth of recordings of speakers pronouncing thousands of words. Let’s start there.
Here’s a recording for you to listen to - Annie Nuuanu Quihano
This kupunahine is from Kau, Hawaii. She talks a lot about mahi ai (farming) and has some particularly unique pronunciation of words like maua and hoao and uses rare words like kuilo and pinonanona.
Whatever you decide, keep practicing daily. Stay consistent and you’ll be speaking like a native before you know it.
Owau no,
Malu
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