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Spoken Hawaiian: An Incomplete and Unauthoritative Guide

What, only 12 letters?!

Nineteenth-century American missionaries used only 12 letters to create a written version of the spoken Hawaiian language. Superficially, that might make Hawaiian seem simple. But Hawaiian is a much more complex and subtle language than 12 letters can do justice to. However, we’re stuck with those 12 letters—the five English vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and seven of the consonants (h, k, l, m, n, p, w).

Consonants

Consonants have the same sound in Hawaiian as they do in everyday English except for “w.” “W” is sometimes pronounced as “v” when it follows “a,” always pronounced as “v” when it follows “e” or “i.”

Vowels

The vowels are generally pronounced as they are in Italian, with each vowel sounded separately. Authentic Hawaiian makes further distinctions, but those are of more interest to scholars than to hikers.¹ The following is a simplified system. Vowel sounds in general are:

a like “ah” in “ah!” e like “ay” in “day.” i like “ee” as in “whee!” o like “o” in “go.” u like “oo” in “food” (or “u” in “rude”)

Notice that that means that when you see two or more of the same letter in a row, you pronounce each of them separately: