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'Okina and kahakō in Hawaiian media

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  • 'Okina and kahakō in Hawaiian media

    I just got though this week's issue of Honolulu Weekly, and am peeved at their inconsistent use of 'okina and kahakō in spelling Hawaiian names and words. Sometimes it's Kāhala, sometimes it's just Kahala. In the same listing. Grr.

    This raises the general issue of Hawaiian spelling in not only the Weekly but also in the Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin. Do these papers have internal standards on Hawaiian spelling? I would hope that they do; after all, if they don't, it's likely no one else will.

    (Back to the Weekly for one more complaint, this time a plain old glaring typo: c'mon guys, it's Wai'alae Avenue, not Wai'lae.)

  • #2
    Re: 'Okina and kahakō in Hawaiian media

    Over at the Honolulu Advertiser:
    For the past few months, The Advertiser has been experimenting with the use of diacritical marks on Hawaiian words. With today’s newspaper, we make that change permanent, committing to the use of the kahako and ‘okina on all of our pages.
    I'm not sure if the Star Bulletin has a stated policy (I could swear I've seen something similar, and they've written up Hawaiian diacriticals as early as 1996), but I've definitely noticed Hawaiian diacriticals in their stories - at least in feature stories if not on Page A1. They also run "Kauakukalahale," a series of columns in the Hawaiian language.

    My how times have changed. When I was editor of Ka Leoat UH, the setup back then couldn't do the diacritical marks natively, so we would typeset the affected columns on a Mac in the newsroom, then paste the laser printer output right onto the final page proofs. And we got into a small storm of controversy when I pushed to print Hawaiian language columns in the paper without an accompanying translation. (The "compromise" was to make translations available for pickup at the office.)

    Back then, I think the BOP and much of the campus thought I was making trouble for nothing. Now working towards proper language presentation is seen as positive, if not quite perfect.

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    • #3
      Re: 'Okina and kahakō in Hawaiian media

      Originally posted by pzarquon
      Over at the Honolulu Advertiser:
      For the past few months, The Advertiser has been experimenting with the use of diacritical marks on Hawaiian words. With today’s newspaper, we make that change permanent, committing to the use of the kahako and ‘okina on all of our pages.
      They may say so, but I don't see it in practice. For example, this article in today's Advertiser says it's posted from Pu'unene. But according to Place Names of Hawai'i -- which the Advertiser says it's going to use as a reference -- it's Pu'unēnē. Apparently 'okina are easier to remember than kahakō.

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      • #4
        Re: 'Okina and kahakō in Hawaiian media

        Apparently 'okina are easier to remember than kahakō.
        Are the kahakō missing in the print edition as well? In the linked statement of policy, they did disclaim that for their online edition, only the `okina would be reliably represented.

        I wonder if the policy extends to personal names, rather than just place names? I definitely made things harder for myself by giving my third child a Hawaiian name with both diacriticals: Kekūanaō‘a.

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        • #5
          Re: 'Okina and kahakō in Hawaiian media

          Originally posted by pzarquon
          Are the kahakō missing in the print edition as well? In the linked statement of policy, they did disclaim that for their online edition, only the `okina would be reliably represented.
          Hmm. [shuffle shuffle] Well, what do you know, the paper edition has it right. OK then. I am mollified.


          I wonder if the policy extends to personal names, rather than just place names? I definitely made things harder for myself by giving my third child a Hawaiian name with both diacriticals: Kekūanaō‘a.
          Hoo boy. It's like my friend who has a French name, but can never get the authorities to correctly put in the accents.

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: 'Okina and kahakō in Hawaiian media

            I personally find using the so-called proper way to spell Hawaiian words a hassle because they involve extra keystrokes and the Hawaiian lanugage character set on my Mac OSX never got installed. If I want to install that now, I have probably reformat the whole drive. Also not all fonts seem to support those character sets and the goofy keystroke combinations you have to use.

            That said is there an easy way to do this stuff so that if you spell something like "Kahala" the computer will just automatically add in all of the correct marks? And is this stuff backward compatible to OS9? What about Windows?
            I'm still here. Are you?

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            • #7
              Re: 'Okina and kahakō in Hawaiian media

              I'm going to get blasted for asking about this since I never took any Hawaiian language classes but what is the origin of these marks?

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              • #8
                Re: 'Okina and kahakō in Hawaiian media

                Originally posted by helen
                I'm going to get blasted for asking about this since I never took any Hawaiian language classes but what is the origin of these marks?
                Hawaiian was an oral language, and didn't become a written one until Westerners arrived. But, like with other languages (Chinese being the most complex example), it was clear that pronunciation of the "same" written word could mean different things depending on how it sounded. While some changes made to "formalize" written Hawaiian were iffy (the replacing of the letter/sound 'T' with 'K'), the two diacritical marks were seen as vital to preserving proper pronunciation and meaning.

                A popular example of how an `okina and a kahakō can change the meaning of a word is "pau":

                • pau = finished, ended, all done
                • pa`u = soot, smudge, ink powder
                • pa`ū = moist, damp
                • pā`ū = skirt

                Originally posted by Mel
                That said is there an easy way to do this stuff so that if you spell something like "Kahala" the computer will just automatically add in all of the correct marks?
                I don't know about at the OS level, but Microsoft Word (and presumably other word processing programs) has its "AutoCorrect as you type" and "AutoFormat as you type" options. You could teach it to automatically turn Waikiki into Waikīkī, and so on. But after you've programmed in your most commonly used words, you'd still be back to looking the rest up as you come across them.

                Perhaps one day the tech wizards at Hale Kuamo`o will be able to put out a "macro pack" or some kind of prepackaged set of AutoCorrect/AutoFormat commands that would catch most of the problematic words. Of course, in the case of "pau" as demonstrated above, autoformatting won't work 'cause it depends on what meaning you're going for.

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                • #9
                  Re: 'Okina and kahakō in Hawaiian media

                  I think what you'd probably end up with is a system like you have with Japanese language word processors. You type in kana (syllabic characters) and the software reads them and gives you a list of corresponding kanji (ideographic characters) to select from. You could do something like that with Hawaiian, so that when you type in pau, it gives you [ pau | pa`u | pa`ū | pā`ū ] to select from.

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                  • #10
                    Re: 'Okina and kahakō in Hawaiian media

                    Or, when you type in haole, you can select either haole or hā'ole... depending on exactly what you mean.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: 'Okina and kahako¯ in Hawaiian media

                      We have Kahala with and without kahakö in the same listing because we keep spellings of proper names. The Kahala Mandarin Oriental does not use the kahako in its name.

                      What do you guys think? Is that simply irritating? Should we use ‘okina and kahakö in proper names whether the company or person uses them or not?

                      Originally posted by Glen Miyashiro
                      I just got though this week's issue of Honolulu Weekly, and am peeved at their inconsistent use of 'okina and kahako¯ in spelling Hawaiian names and words. Sometimes it's Ka¯hala, sometimes it's just Kahala. In the same listing. Grr.

                      This raises the general issue of Hawaiian spelling in not only the Weekly but also in the Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin. Do these papers have internal standards on Hawaiian spelling? I would hope that they do; after all, if they don't, it's likely no one else will.

                      (Back to the Weekly for one more complaint, this time a plain old glaring typo: c'mon guys, it's Wai'alae Avenue, not Wai'lae.)

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Re: 'Okina and kahako¯ in Hawaiian media

                        Originally posted by WeaklyEd
                        We have Kahala with and without kahakö in the same listing because we keep spellings of proper names. The Kahala Mandarin Oriental does not use the kahako in its name. What do you guys think? Is that simply irritating? Should we use ‘okina and kahakö in proper names whether the company or person uses them or not?
                        Well, as pzarquon mentioned earlier, the Advertiser says:
                        We have made some decisions on style. For example, we will abide by the wishes of individuals, companies and organizations on whether their names take the kahako or ‘okina.
                        I guess this seems like a reasonable approach, although I would hope that the Kahala Mandarin Oriental would change its mind and spell Kāhala properly.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Re: 'Okina and kahakō in Hawaiian media

                          I realize I'm jumping in late in the game on this one, but coming up with something practical is an issue for me right now.

                          I'm not tech saavy, but I've learned different representations of 'okina and kahakō aren't visible to all users.

                          I am adamant, however, of representing 'okina and kahako somehow, to at least acknowledge the correct spelling.

                          I've tried downloading Hawaiian fonts--unsuccessfully. I've reverted to using an apostrophe for 'okina, just to be sure the representation shows up to everyone (but I'm apprehensive about that, too, because an apostrophe is not an 'okina, so I feel that's kindof disrespectful).

                          What is the most common way to represent 'okina and kahakō? What are the keystrokes and/or where can I find them in my Word Processor?
                          ~'Ailina

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Re: 'Okina and kahak? in Hawaiian media

                            Originally posted by pzarquon
                            ...tech wizards at Hale Kuamo`o...
                            wizards? mahalo

                            the industry movement right now is towards a character encoding system called unicode. this system has more capacity for complicated characters such as those found in cryllic or chinese. hawaiian characters are finally being integrated into mainstream fonts that use this encoding. the process, however, is taking a bit longer than we had hoped due to some... misalignments between the larger players. for viewing hawaiian characters via unicode, on web pages for example, windows xp and mac os x 10.2.x pull it off well. older OSs and older versions of browsers may display some characters wrong, i.e. putting the kahako on the side of the letter, rather than above it. for typing, only mac os 10.2.x or higher can do it properly in unicode. however, not all applications can fully use unicode fonts. (if you're familiar with os x, only cocoa apps can, not carbon apps.) *whew*

                            sOoOo, for typing your own hawaiian diacritically-correct characters, here are the more widely accepted, free-to-the-public options:

                            for windows 98-xp: http://www.olelo.hawaii.edu/eng/resources/keyman.html

                            for any mac os before X: http://www.olelo.hawaii.edu/eng/reso...mac_fonts.html
                            (note: most references are to system 7. no mind ah... long time we no update!)

                            for any version of mac os X: http://www.olelo.hawaii.edu/eng/reso...x/hifonts.html
                            (note: on that page, there is a link to download the fonts that you need to install. that link wrong... the correct one is http://www.olelo.hawaii.edu/eng/reso...mac_fonts.html )

                            hope i was able to kokua you guys... and sorry, we can't officially provide support for these fonts. (bumbye da king wizard goin' lick us!)

                            - ili_g

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Re: 'Okina and kahakō in Hawaiian media

                              Mahalo for the inside scoop, Ili_G! Especially the perspective on unicode, which I only barely understand. Would "da king wizard" be Scott Crawford, by any chance? Either way, I meant what I said, the Hale Kuamo`o team does awesome work.

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