Poor pronunciation

[Glen Miyashiro]

Argh! I can't stand it any more!

Hawai'i, Havai'i. Either one's OK. But listening to HPR, I constantly hear Kayla Rosenfeld say Hawa'i (ha-WA'-i), and even worse, Chad Blair says Hawai (ha-WAI), with no 'okina at all. It just grates on my ears.

[Albert]

Re: Poor pronunciation

Oh well, they've got some announcer on KHPR right now who says "con-sair-toe" (poor Dvorak).

Bad form to do that just before they are going to beg, plead, and nag us to give money in their (sigh) upcoming Fund Raising.

As for the name of these islands, I grew up with my Mama saying "hi-wah-ya", no matter how many times she visited here.

[Ailina]

Re: Poor pronunciation

As for the name of these islands, I grew up with my Mama saying "hi-wah-ya", no matter how many times she visited here.

You got that right. No one can butcher pronunciation like the South! "haw-WYE-yuh"...

[Kalani]

Re: Poor pronunciation

Argh! I can't stand it any more!

Hawai'i, Havai'i. Either one's OK. But listening to HPR, I constantly hear Kayla Rosenfeld say Hawa'i (ha-WA'-i), and even worse, Chad Blair says Hawai (ha-WAI), with no 'okina at all. It just grates on my ears.

hahaha, you sound just like me! In one forum, under my profile I mentioned this. That it doesn't matter how you pronounce it, as long as the 2 "i"s are mentioned.

It seems that people consciously think about the V sound that they mispronounce it anyway b/c they omit the 1st "i".

[kamlost]

Re: Poor pronunciation

Wasn't it that just till a few years ago people did not pronounce the second i?

[Glen Miyashiro]

Re: Poor pronunciation

Wasn't it that just till a few years ago people did not pronounce the second i?

You're right that many people don't pronounce the second i, but it's always been there. These days, with more people paying attention to the Hawaiian language, it's become more common for people to emphasize the pronunciation.

I went and checked Pukui, Elbert, and Mo'okini, and they said:

The orthography used in the Pocket Dictionary represents the slow speech of careful speakers. Normal fast speech differs in several ways. Some of them are:
[...]
(b) Like vowels separated by a glottal stop reduce to glottal stop plus vowel: Hawai'i becomes Hawa'i, pua'a 'pig' becomes pu'a.

The Pocket Hawaiian Dictionary, 1975

So this isn't exactly a new issue, nor is it strictly a bad thing I guess. Just sloppy speaking.

[Linkmeister]

Re: Poor pronunciation

Can I throw in the one that drives me crazy? It's from the English language, but still:

You. Televison weather ladies. The word is temperature. Thefirst "r" is not silent. "Tempachur" is incorrect.

Then there's "liberry" for library. What's so difficult about pronouncing your "r's?" It's not like they need to be rolled (don't ask me to pronounce "Nicaragua" correctly; I'll screw that up big time).

Diction, I say, diction!

[Kalani]

Re: Poor pronunciation

You're right that many people don't pronounce the second i, but it's always been there. These days, with more people paying attention to the Hawaiian language, it's become more common for people to emphasize the pronunciation.

I went and checked Pukui, Elbert, and Mo'okini, and they said:


So this isn't exactly a new issue, nor is it strictly a bad thing I guess. Just sloppy speaking.

I know that issue is brought up in HAWAIIAN GRAMMAR as well as the regular dictionary, but this is the first time I've heard of the same thing with "Hawaii". But the question is, is it a recent thing? B/c the fusion of vowels with those examples actually is a natural occurance, not limited to the Hawaiian language.

[AuntieNellieKulolo]

Re: Poor pronunciation

The word I always have trouble with is mu'umu'u. OK, I know it should be two syllables instead of four, but it seems kind of...pretentious? pedantic? himakmaka? especially coming from my haole mouth. How do you pronounce it?

[Miulang]

Re: Poor pronunciation

The word I always have trouble with is mu'umu'u. OK, I know it should be two syllables instead of four, but it seems kind of...pretentious? pedantic? himakmaka? especially coming from my haole mouth. How do you pronounce it?

If you want to be correct, you need to pronounce every letter (should be 4 syllables). If you want to be like the tourists who don't know any better, you could say "moomoo", but I crack up laughing at the visual image of someone being swathed in a baggy cowskin !

Miulang

[Glen Miyashiro]

Re: Poor pronunciation

What's the difference between a mu'umu'u and a mu'u? I have heard of both but I'm no fashion expert. Is a mu'u only half as long?

[Mokihana]

Re: Poor pronunciation

Can I throw in the one that drives me crazy? It's from the English language, but still:

You. Televison weather ladies. The word is temperature. Thefirst "r" is not silent. "Tempachur" is incorrect.

Then there's "liberry" for library. What's so difficult about pronouncing your "r's?" It's not like they need to be rolled (don't ask me to pronounce "Nicaragua" correctly; I'll screw that up big time).

Diction, I say, diction!

Here's my "grating on the nerves" favorite: News people who leave out the C in Arctic and say "Artic"...... Arggghhhhhhhhhh!!!!

[AuntieNellieKulolo]

Re: Poor pronunciation

I taught English for a couple of years in Venice, Italy, and constantly overheard tourists saying 'gon-DO-la'. As annoying to a speaker of Italian as a Midwesterner saying Hawaya...

[Mokihana]

Re: Poor pronunciation

You're right that many people don't pronounce the second i, but it's always been there. These days, with more people paying attention to the Hawaiian language, it's become more common for people to emphasize the pronunciation.

I went and checked Pukui, Elbert, and Mo'okini, and they said:


So this isn't exactly a new issue, nor is it strictly a bad thing I guess. Just sloppy speaking.

So are you saying that fast speaking is sloppy? It sounds a little confusing to me, what Pukui et al are saying... The orthography used in the Pocket Dictionary represents the slow speech of careful speakers. Normal fast speech differs in several ways. Some of them are:
[...]
(b) Like vowels separated by a glottal stop reduce to glottal stop plus vowel: Hawai'i becomes Hawa'i, pua'a 'pig' becomes pu'a.


If normal fast speech would say "Hawa‘i", then is it sloppy or just fast? Are there any native Hawaiian speakers whose first language was Hawaiian say it this way? Or would they use the slow form of speech and put in both of the i's?

That said.... when I was growing up, no one said "Hawai‘i", the way it should be said. As a matter of fact, still yet, when I run into locals here on the mainland, it's easy to tell if they're old-timers because they say "Hawa‘i", same as when I was growing up. Most of the locals I know say it that way... it's how we said it growing up, when there wasn't the wonderful emphasis on the language that there is today.

And that said, because the Hawaiian language is so important to me, I now say "Hawai‘i". It feels right. Like now I say "mu‘umu‘u", even though growing up, we never did.

[dick]

Re: Poor pronunciation

Interestingly enough, growing up on Maui, we always pronounced Hali'imaile as "hailee-mailee" ; Omaopio as "omo-pioh" and Ma'alaea as "mah-lie-ya." Most everyone I knew pronounced them that way. If they were to be pronounced correctly, everyone would be like, "where?"