T-T-T-Tiki T-Tiki Wanna speaky, speaky, speaky with the mighty spirit Fufu. T-T-T-Tiki T-Tiki Wanna speaky, speaky, speaky So words I will not mince. Please make a man of my fresh fish prince. This is real fish talk, no lie And then the fish turns into a gorgeous prince and sings I'm prince Humuhumunukunukuapua'a
I'm surprised I never caught on to the appropriation of Hawaiian culture in this song as a child. As a Native Hawaiian, this is disrespectful and an entire misrepresentation of multiple cultures. First off, "Pineapple Princess"... Pineapples are not native to Hawai'i and were not involved with our culture. They were introduced by missionaries, and a big part as to why many people associate Pineapples with Hawai'i is because of the Dole Plantation. Next, the name tiki is inherently Maori. Unless HSM was just aiming for Polynesian in general.. Also, the princess' name Tiki is representative of the first man (similar to Adam). There's no significance to it in this situation. A better name would've been Pele (goddess of volcanoes) since in mythology, that's who Kama Pua'a (a shapeshifter who can turn into the Hawaiian Triggerfish) fell in love with. Especially since Pele in legend got angry with Kama Pua'a whereas in the song a volcano erupts. I will say however Ashley had great pronunciation and attention to dipth thongs. However, their pronunciation of Ukulele was off. It's not "you-coo-lay-lee" but "ū-kū-lay-lay". Hawaiian is a phonetic language like Japanese, it sounds the way its written unlike English (e.g. bow and bow). There's a million things I want to also say, but alas this was made in 2007 when Disney didn't care. I will say all of the dances were nothing representatives of Hula, the clothes were awful and stereotypical, they didn't even bother to research names of actual volcanoes or gods, and although I love Sharpay, I'm against the producers who made this song that mocked our Hawaiian culture
She’s a stuck up fictional rich kid. Don’t read into it too much, it’s not meant to be taken seriously. Definitely meant to be “sorta hawaiian” at least. I do agree if one wishes to make something genuinely hawaiian, they should be more knowledgeable on what does and doesn’t represent the place
It's also a matter of privilege, no one was arrested for speaking English or practicing brit culture, but Hawaiians were arrested for speaking Hawaiian in the last century, so it's a more sensitive topic
lol Kabuki is also a Japanese theatre form, so it could’ve been used in that way, seeing as though it was a kind of theatrical performance she was doing.
Okay so when I was seven years old I barely spoke English, so I had no idea about the lyrics of this song. My dad was trying to download this for me when we finally found the song, and I remember he told me: well, I don’t know why the file has such a weird name, but apparently it is not corrupted so don’t worry about it. 13 years later, I have just found out the ‘weird name’ was its actual title...
humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa is actually the Hawaiian name of a wedge Tail trigger fish. It's pretty much saying that the fish has a pig nose, only emphasizing how 'ugly' the prince was in fish form.
T-T-T-Tiki T-Tiki Wanna speaky, speaky, speaky with the mighty spirit Fufu. T-T-T-Tiki T-Tiki Wanna speaky, speaky, speaky So words I will not mince. Please make a man of my fresh fish prince. This is real fish talk, no lie And then the fish turns into a gorgeous prince and sings I'm prince Humuhumunukunukuapua'a
