Did you know this word is actually Tahitian?

Aloha mai kakou,

Let’s get right into it. I want to talk about another new word… hauki. 

Hauki is actually taken from the Tahitian word “hauti.” I did some research on the word, but I also talked to a friend of mine who is a linguist and fluent in Tahitian. I asked him if  hauki was similar to our word, paani. He responded saying, “Aale mea okoa o ka manao.” Meaning, “There’s no difference in the meaning.” 

Why don’t we just use paani then? Why borrow a Tahitian word that already exists in Hawaiian?

When the new dictionary Mamaka Kaiao was being put together, some members of the Hawaiian Lexicon Committee were looking for a general term for “sport” in Hawaiian, but there was none. A general term for sports, the way it’s categorized in English, is not at all the same in Hawaiian. We don’t have various kinds of sports under the same umbrella. For example:

Paani kinipopo—any sport with a ball

Au—swimming

Kaka pahi—fencing

Hakoko—wrestling

Heihei kaa—car racing

Hapai hao/paona—weight lifting

We have terms for all kinds of sports. The catch is that we don’t have an equivalent word for sports, as it is thought of in English. These new words are created to fit into English thinking, but that’s not what we want.

When we choose to learn Hawaiian, we’re not trying to speak English through Hawaiian. We leave English thinking behind and adapt Hawaiian thinking. 

Maybe you’ve used words like hauki before… Maybe you didn’t know they were borrowed or created this way… well, now you do. Now you can make more informed decisions.

Don’t get so fixated on individual words. As you speak Hawaiian, just use the English word in the middle of your sentence. Native speakers of Hawaiian and all other languages do this. That’s who we pattern after.

What do you think? Do you think we need Hawaiian words for every English concept?

Na’u iho no,

Malu

If you want to learn how to use the word like paani, there are dozens of examples in my Hawaiian Language Courses. 

Beginner Course

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