You may have noticed that their has been some audio issues in the more recent videos. This is because I moved house recently and my new office has a bit of an echo to it which is causing me all kinds of havoc. As I get more stuff in here I am hoping it will sort itself out. For now please remain understanding while I try and sort it out video by video. If you can't be understanding feel free to stop watching. Whatever is easier for you.
What I find a bit off is that you make it seem like the Hawaiian alphabet is small because it was somehow the goal of its creators. The Hawaiian alphabet is small, because the language has a very simple sound system, as you hinted at towards the end of the video. The way you present it turns it upside down. The letter B was not dropped because it was 'similar' to P, but simply beacuse the Hawaiian languages doesn't have the sound 'made by' the letter B. This is unlike most European languages that actually have more sounds than the basic Latin alphabet can encode, so in English for instance we use combinations of letters like 'ch' or 'ee' to encode single sounds; plus in a language with a long literary history in the Latin script, like English, you get historical spelling, which you won't find in Hawaiian, which has been written down for a short period of time.
Sure, but as he also points the Missionaries also wanted to be as phonetic as possible! They could have easily not done that and decided that some words in Hawaiian should use ⟨B⟩ and others ⟨P⟩ on their whims or misunderstandings. This has also happened with other languages that also gained their writing systems from European explorers and/or missionaries and later the people from those places had to reform it to be more useful to them.
C in English is a fairly useless letter sound wise. We have S and K with C using both sounds and only existing for CH. I'd personally have it that c only represents the sound for CH. Example: Curc instead of Church.
What if the Hawaiian language did have a greater variety of sounds, but the missionaries just simplified it. We would never know, because most of us that know Hawaiian have not learned Hawaiian entirely verbally, and even if we did, the people that we learned it from probably learned the written form at some point
@@closmasmas9080 Actually we would, but it requires comparison studies with it's cousin languages and with previous attempts at romanization before the current script was adopted.
@@closmasmas9080 Some of these pronunciations have survived, actually. They're just very rare now. The most commonly heard one is the word for grandparent: "tutu." The letter "t" is not officially part of the Hawaiian alphabet but has survived from pre-James Cook times. You hear it a lot in songs too where the standard Hawaiian "k" is pronounced like a "t." This was probably a regional variation that was mostly overshadowed when written language had the effect of standardizing everything and eliminating regional differences. A less common example is the Hawaiian Street name "Beretania." Even in Hawaii, most people don't realize it's actually a Hawaiian name since it starts with a "b" and also contains a "t." To our modern Hawaiian ears, it just doesn't sound Hawaiian, but it's one of the few surviving examples of Hawaiian words from before the Hawaiian alphabet was created. Today, it would be spelled and pronounced "pelekania" but in the olden days, you probably would have heard both depending on who was speaking and what part of the nation they were from. There's also a "Gilipake" Street that oddly start's with a "g."
Wikipedia got its name, not primarily because it was a "quick"ly accessible encyclopedia, but because it was an encyclopedia that was a wiki. A wiki is a webpage designed to be quickly written, edited, linked and formatted. But yes, based on the Hawaiian word.
As someone from Hawai'i, and I mean no offense, but holy crap you butchered every Hawaiian word. 'Okina is pronounced "oh-kee-nah". Ukulele is "oo-koo-lay-lay" and you failed to touch on that the Hawaiian W makes the same sound as an English V. Also, the reason the Hawaiian alphabet is only 13 letters is because that's how many sounds make up the language. Why have a B or a T when you don't even use that sound?
Note that with ukelele, since it's also an English word (since it's been borrowed into English, just like how entrepreneur is an English word borrowed from French) the English pronunciation is used. It'd only really be wrong if he was saying it in a Hawaiian sentence. I agree with that last part tho. He was misleading on that one.
Born and Raised on Oahu and have a degree in Linguistics and Pacific Anthropology at the UH Manoa. I'd just like to point out that in the days the missionaries were creating the Hawaiian Alphabet, the sound of certain letters that in today's Hawaiian we would say clearly sounds like a K or P wasn't as clear cut. The sound in words like Kapa or even Kamehameha was often described as sounding somewhere between a "T" and a "K" and was unpronounceable to most Western missionaries. You can find old books and newspapers where both of the examples I gave were written with a T instead of a K, (Tapa, like it's pronounced in Samoan) and many instances of Hawaiians using Tamehameha instead of the modern accepted Kamehameha.
@@edmillan7427 If Hawaiian consonants had been "unpronounceable to most Western missionaries" then those missionaries would never have succeeded in learning to communicate in Hawaiian with native speakers of Hawaiian. But they did succeed. So, obviously, the "unpronounceable" "somewhere between" theory is bullshit. If you earned a Linguistics degree from UHM, then you should understand phonemes and their allophones.
Here in Hawaii, most people are essentially bilingual. Their native language (English, Hawaiian, Japanese) and the Hawaiian "Creole" or pidgin. Pidgin deserves its own video. Please make one
disclaimer: i'm not a linguist or hawai'ian speaker, but this is just what i think and please correct me if im wrong personally, i feel like you villified making the alphabet small and phonemic when there's nothing wrong with that, but it makes sense that it's small because the hawai'ian language has a small phonemic inventory. also the reason that letters were removed from the alphabet was because they represented sounds that were identical in the hawai'ian language, not because they were similar to them.
I am a linguist and a speaker of Hawaiian. Your comment is sound. The missionaries did a pretty good job when they created the Hawaiian alphabet. The only phoneme they missed was the glottal stop, and they did in fact represent it in certain words, using the apostrophe. They also missed phonemic vowel length. Anyway, native speakers of Hawaiian successfully mastered reading and writing, using the "missionary" alphabet. ("Hawai'ian" is not a word.)
@@gregcarter8656 that last sentence was a bit odd, the common practice is to put that sentence after a line break in a "post-script[um]" section (p.s. for short) P.s. consider using more line breakes between your lines, we are reading a youtube comment, not a college thesis.
To username "Jafar" --- RU-vid does not require comments to follow any stylesheet, nor "common practice". If you cannot handle 4 lines without a blank line, well, that's YOUR problem.
Portuguese immigrants brought their braguinha to Hawaii. Hawaiians then called the braguinha "ukulele". After awhile it became world famous as the Hawaiian ukulele, even though it was actually adopted and adapted from the Portuguese braguinha.
The 'ukulele comes from the Kingdom of Hawai'i and the Machete de Braga is from Madeira. The Machete is linear tuned at DGBD while the 'ukulele is tuned a re-entrant GCEA which is taken from the 5 string Rajao de Braga which was tuned DGCEA and the D string was taken off and it was not tuned linear but with a re-entrant High G. Manuel Nunes one of the Portuguese who traveled from Madeira to Hawai'i in 1879 called himself the inventor of the 'ukulele. So the 'ukulele is Hawaiian and the Machete de Braga is Madeiran or Portuguese.
Not sure how true this is but a Hawaiian friend of mine told me that Hawaiians picked up on the written language fast because of the Bible. To us stories of Jesus walking on water or raising the dead are hard to believe, but for Hawaiians they saw Jesus like a priest (Kahuna) of theirs, so these were not stories but matters of fact. Since the Kahuna were gone, because the breaking of the Kapu (Laws) He was the next best thing. As I said, i'm not sure if this is true because I had never heard it put that way, but thought I would share.
A lot of the information in this video seems to be misleading or false, so I figured I’d point out the things I noticed so people might take a deeper look! 6:14 : You make it seem like the missionaries forced the Latin alphabet “instead of using any native characters,” even though Hawaiian had no form of written language at the time. 8:16 : Letters we’re not dropped simply because they made similar sounds. Hawaiian has a simple phoneme inventory, which makes the alphabet simpler, not the other way around. Letters were dropped because they had no morphological differences from others, not just because the sounded similar. Why have W and V if they both can be read, pronounced, and function identically? 8:53 : Making loan words compatible with a language by changing them isn’t unique to Hawaiian. Loan words in any language often sound and look very different from their original words, especially with names. Patrick also makes it seem like it was the missionaries that decided on the vowel structure or the small phonemic inventory, and also implies (thinking that it’s the missionaries fault) that it makes Hawaiian a worse language, which of course is not true. Hawaiians made the language, and its phonotactics don’t make Hawaiian worse than any other language. 10:08 : The only rule is that ever consonant must have a vowel after it. 10:38 : Japanese DOES NOT have the same structure, otherwise, words like “teppan” would not work. Also, Marquesas, ʻokina, and the difference between kai ane kaʻi were mispronounced, and the entire video is pretty much a limited and less accurate version of the Wikipedia page for the subject. Other than the absence of the kahakō and ʻokina which was quickly fixed, the Hawaiian alphabet is widely seen as a good adaptation of the Latin alphabet. This video seems to me like a “religion bad” kind of thing which unintentionally detracts from the Hawaiian Language itself. I hope anyone who reads this far looks into the matter themself! It’s all super interesting!
Good criticism. The Pukui-Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary has Kristo and Kristiano, but of course those are adopted/adapted words ("borrowings") from Greek and/or English.
pennsylvania "dutch" from "deutsch", german for "german" there. saved you from having to make a 10 minute video to explain a simple example of how a word becomes corrupted. you’re welcome.
While your reasoning is a common story, the Dutch in Pennsylvania Dutch comes from the word "deitsch", which is the word the Pennsylvania Dutch used to describe themselves to separate themselves from later German immigrants. Deitcsch, Dutch, and Deutsch all come from the same Proto-Germanic word which means "of the people".
@@xXJ4FARGAMERXx except, yes it is. Of course you can be more detailed. That’s how one would make a 10 minute video out of a 2 second explanation… But what I said IS entirely true. If I say “this book contains words” and you say “it contains letters”, it does not make what I said untrue. Or even “not entirely true”. It just shows that you care to give unnecessary extraneous detail that doesn’t pertain to the immediate question. No one asked where the German word derived from, so the detail about PIE was unnecessary. No one asked what the definition of the German word is, so to tell me that it means “the people” (when many names of groups are basically translated “us” or “people” into “the name for the group”) is also extraneous.
@@scruffytube5169 So.... How should we refer to stuff that excludes a lot of information? "Studies show that drinking alcohol is good for you" (Because it has tiny amount of a chemical that has the ability to get rid of poisons in your body, and you'd have to drink very LARGE amounts to feel a difference)
@@junjunjamore7735 Wonder why they translated Jesus with an 'i' but John with a 'k'. They start with the same letter in English, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, so why the change?
@@kky-jd3xj Maybe it has to do with the following vowel (Johan- → 'han → kan, or something like that), maybe they didn't want the two words to be similar or maybe it's just that they didn't care
@@kky-jd3xj in arabic, the name "jesus" is عيسى ('iisaah) formally, and يسوع (yesuu') among christians and Egyptian. While "John" is جون (john) in normal arabic and dialects, and جون (gohn) among egyptians. Hard 'g' (as in "Gun") is similar to 'k'. And 'J' has its roots along with 'i' in representing the 'yuh' consonant (as in "Yes")
Yeah, the Japanese language is known to be similar in phonological structure to the Austronesian languages. Scholars theorize that there may have been prehistoric relations (even though that doesn’t form a proper language family with clear traceable evidences). If one just look at Romanized spellings it may look as if “the Hawaiian only has Ls and the Japanese only Rs” but they are just differing approximations to one similar consonant both languages have.
This consonant appears in various other languages, such as Spanish and my native Turkish. However, it represents an R in both languages because they have a definitive L sound as well (and Spanish also has a second, trilled R). Meanwhile, in Korean, this sound morphs into an L at the end of a syllable. Also interesting is how it occasionally appears in English, but represents _D_ (as in “rider” in certain dialects). This explains the “D sounds similar to the Hawaiian L so let’s axe it” argument. Edit: I’ve done some looking into it, and apparently there’s some variation within the “L-R” sound. Depending on the speaker and dialect, it may appear as an “L”, “tapped/Japanese R” or “approximant/English R”. It seems that the former two are more prevalent, though I’m not sure.
Confusion between the "L" and "R" sounds is common enough that linguists have invented words for such. Substituting "L" where "R" should go is called "lambdazation" (sp?), while the reverse is called "rhotization". Both terms come from the names of Greek letters.
Side note - The consonant is similar in the sense that it acts as a single phoneme in respective languages’ sound systems. Typical phonetic realization may differ. Whether it is realized L‐like or R‐like, or anywhere in between, that doesn’t contribute to what word is said - just like how in English how long a vowel is held doesn’t change meaning. What is common among said languages is that they don’t distinguish two separate consonants around that particular articulation.
@@さゆぬ-x7i However, long ago, English had some contrasts between long versus short vowels. As for Japanese and Austronesian phonology, any similarities are due to natural phonological processes. For example, Consonant Vowel ("CV") syllable structure is phonologically "preferred". French is a nice example of that, because you can compare the written to the spoken forms. Written CVC is often spoken CV, like "chez".
This video is very misleading. Letters weren't dropped from the Hawaiian alphabet because they "make similar sounds" to other letters, but because they represent sounds that don't exist as phonemes in Hawaiian. It was never about simplifying the alphabet; it's just that Hawaiian has fewer phonemes than European languages.
@@camelopardalis84 I believe that's in Gilbertese, the language of Kiribati. There's an island/atol there called Kiritimati, which, according to Google maps, contains the towns of London, Paris, Poland, and Banana.
@@rjdjdjdj5623 Ah, yes, "Banana", named after the European city of the same name. ("Banana" in your list really made me laugh, actually.) And yes, it's a different language. I wasn't really aware of that when I wrote my comment.
This video is a bit misleading. The alphabet was not made small because the missionaries wanted to make it as simple as possible - the alphabet was made small simply because Hawaiian just does not have that many phonemes (individual sounds) in the language. The phonemic inventory of Hawaiian has only the five basic vowels, plus their long counterparts, p, w (which sometimes sounds like "v"), k (which sometimes sounds like "t"), l (which sometimes sounds like "r"), h, the 'okina, m, and n.
Those are not “spelling rules” or alphabet rules, but just a basic feature of its phonology. Both Japanese and Hawaiian use the simplest syllable structure allowed in universal phonological theory, hence the similarity, which is a built-in feature of human language, and these languages ended up in the same stage, basically.
Actually, in Japanese, you can end a syllable with a consonant, but only the letter N. The M is pronounced as an M before P or B, but they're both written with the same letter in Japanese. That's how you end up with words like Simbashi and anki.
the better way to describe it is a nasal consonant, which transforms into whatever nasal consonant based on the next letter. For example, when followed by labial consonants, it's pronounced as m, when followed by alveolar consonants, it's pronounced as n, when followed by velar consonants, it's pronounced ng. But when followed by vowels, h sound, or at the end of a word, it's pronounced roughly as a uvular nasal (basically ng (nasal sound) but the position is uvular as in the position of the tongue when pronouncing the letter q in arabic or greenlandic. actually now that i think about it, it's kinda similar to how the letter n in french and m in portuguese and classical latin works
Our language is ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi. Not Hawaiian if we want to be technical and teach people the correct terms. Also, Native Hawaiians are not native Americans.
really depends on whether Hawaii is in the Americas doesnt it? Cause arent Native people from S/N America all Native Americans? I know nothing of geography so I have no idea whether its geographically correct
@@beatm6948 Hawaii is a Polynesian island and most native or indigenous Hawaiians are of Polynesian descent. Definitely not related to the natives of pre-Columbian America. That said, it appears that they had limited contact given how ube and sweet potato reached Polynesia and Southeast Asia.
No yeah brah for real I was listening to this guy and I was like....this fool is saying we speak hawaiian....and then to hear that he couldn't even say hula correctly was cringe
I basically hold 60% of the population of Wyoming in contempt, but its mountains and forests are every bit as stunningly beautiful as anything in Hawai'i.
This video kind of gave me a headache to be honest. Your wording implies that the missionaries invented a language for the native hawai'ians to speak and read, and contrived it to be simple so that they'd have the easiest time learning it, but all they actually did was adapt the latin alphabet to be used for the language the hawai'ians were already speaking. Everything that is simple and easy about hawai'ian was already simple and easy before it was ever adapted to pen and paper. Only 13 letters were used because only 13 sounds are used to distinguish words from eachother in hawai'ian. Every consonant must be followed by a vowel because that is how the syllable structure of the language works. The fact that the allophones are always written with the same letter was definitely a purposeful decision to make things simpler, but nothing else you mention in the video was anything anyone 'decided' to do for any purpose, it's just how things were.
YESSSS, ive been sailing the depths of the comment section to find someone else who thinks this, like his wording makes the missionaries seem like "villains" who want to make a phonetic alphabet in a language with a small amount of letters.
Your comment is good, except for two minor points. (1) The "missionary alphabet" had 12 "letters" for Hawaiian phonemes, not 13. Hawaiian has 13 phonemes, but the alphabet had 12 (not 13) "letters". The apostrophe was used to represent the glottal stop phoneme in certain words, but it's a stretch to call the apostrophe a "letter", even though it can function as one. (2) The form "Hawai'ian" is not a word. Not in Hawaiian, and not in English.
To put it simply, the missionaries dumbed down the Hawaiian language for THEIR purposes, not the Hawaiians. My professor in college was very knowledgeable in phonetics and the evolution of languages across Polynesia. The progression of migrations across the Pacific can be seen when specific societies lost certain sounds. The letter S used in Samoa, the ng sound used in Tonga, the letter r still used in many Polynesian societies but not in Hawaii, but they did use it. I went to school with 3 kids from the island of Ni'ihau, who still used those sounds, because they were on a private island, isolated. When they spoke to each other, it sounded like they were speaking Maori.
@@hankakah4180 You clearly don't know what you're talking about. In your other comment, you claimed that Hawaiian does not use T or R. Then here, you say Niihauans use S, NG, and R. You contradict yourself. Hawaiian does NOT sound like Maori, because Maori generally lacks glottal stops. Your comment that missionaries "dumbed down the Hawaiian language" is ABSOLUTELY TOTALLY FALSE. Political bullsh't.
@@gregcarter8656 They use R and T, I said they SOUNDED like Maori! Did you know that in Maori chants that they CAME from a place called Hawaiki? My professor from school brought Maori elders to the South Point on the Big Island and they cried when they saw that the cliffs and mooring holes were from what their chants included! You're a fkn idiot!
Fun fact related to your video and dig at Idaho, Idaho has a mountain range and county kinda named after Hawaii (also a river in Oregon). Some Hawaiian trappers were exploring the area and never seen again, the North West Company that employed them then called the river/area/mountains Owyhee (archaic spelling of Hawaii) in honor of the trappers who disappeared there.
@@sion8 It's from Cook's voyage, or one of the other "early" European contacts. It's an Anglicized approximation of the Hawaiian phrase ʻO Hawaiʻi which is the Hawaiian way of saying "(This) is Hawaii", telling the name of the place. I think another similar archaic spelling was Owhyee. Compares to Otaheite (ʻO Tahiti).
I hate that Hawaii, with its beautiful culture and rich history, has been claimed as a state of the US. It is such a wildly individual and stunning place. It deserves independence.
Hawai’i is technically independent and under occupation of the US because when the annexation of hawai’i happened, the US killed the queen and occupied the place with no treaty, that being said, I agree
@@Didagg that’s extremely interesting! Had no clue about that. You can always assume there’s some sinister colonial practices of either the US or UK are involved.
@@Didagg Your comment is ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT. "US killed the queen" LMFAO 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 The queen was deposed in 1893, by Hawaii citizens. She walked home. 5 years later, Hawaii was annexed in 1898, under the Newlands Resolution. No "treaty" needed. 19 years later, she died in 1917, as a US citizen. Do you see the problems with your timeline?
The US rejected Hawaiian pleas for annexation, several times. The US finally allowed Hawaii to become a territory, but only due to the Spanish-American War and Hawaii's strategic location in the Pacific Ocean. After that, the US rejected Hawaiian pleas for statehood, for over 50 years. If it wasn't a US Territory, it would've fallen to the Japanese around 1940 or so. Hawaiians would've been beheaded by samurai swords, as happened in Korea, China, and elsewhere.
@@Sknotty Those words make our language beautiful. Hawaiian does not have any consonant clusters and always end in open syllables, which makes it sounds unnatural and very savage. It also just has the five basic vowels, which is so overused that it just sounds stale. Hawaiian sounds a lot like Japanese in terms of phonetics and phonotactics, which is even worse. English has an abundance of vowels and consonant clusters which help the language flow much better.
Do you wanna know what the "bias" every one talks about every where realy is? You my friend, so stuck in your on head that cant grasp that other ppls languages can be "NATURAL" for those who speak it. Grow up and travel more.
Every aboriginal people who they claim to "SAVE" ruined their cultures. The 5 biggest landowners were from 5 missionary families. How is it that if they came to "save" Hawaiians, they own all the land? These 5 families overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, because the Queen wanted to go submit her own Constitution which the Big 5 and their followers forced the previous King to sign under the threat to his life in limiting his powers. With the help of the US Marines, they pointed their guns and cannon at the Queen in her palace and threatened her, and forced her to abdicate her throne. She told her people to stand down because she knew this was not right and illegal and didn't want bloodshed. She plead for help from then President Cleveland who sent a man called Blount to investigate and they concluded that this takeover was illegal and to return the monarchy to the Hawaiian kingdom. However President Mckinley was elected and at that time, they were more interested in taking all other countries like Guam, Cuba, Virgin Islands etc. The US Congress Passed legislation acknowledging the overthrow was with the help of the US, President Clinton signed an apology, but till this day, Hawaiians are still being oppressed and occupied and never got their country back.
My dad and I perform the song "Little Grass Shack" which is a song with a fair bit of Hawaiian in it, including a full sentence. He couldn't pronounce it for the life of him so I spent three days memorizing "komo mai no kaua ika hale welakahao" (I don't know if I spelled the last word right) so he lets me say that.
1 Komo 2 mai 3 nō 4 kāua 5 i 6 ka 7 hale 8 wela 9 ka 10 hao 1 enter 2 [directional] 3 [emphasis] 4 we 5 [object] 6 the 7 house 8 hot 9 the 10 iron "We enter the house , the iron is hot" In other words, "when we go inside our love shack, strike while the iron is hot".
I don't know why, as a Brit, you would find it unusual that the US doesn't have an official language, that only some states have. It's exactly the same in the UK!
But that was recently, with the introduction of devolved government. The state who has had an official language the longest seems to be Nebraska with it being as a result of anti-German laws thanks to WWI (I'm sure that was just an excuse and we're going to do it anyways at some point). However, Louisiana did have French and English as official at some point, but that isn't the case in the modern day. Wales and Scotland didn't get their own local parliaments until late 1990s! And they didn't set out to adopt language(s) until the 2000s.
There has been no official language in the UK, ever. The language of the law and government is English, the only language that can be used in Westminster. The Scottish Parliament looked to introduce Scots Gaelic as a working language and it has support, though curiously it was picked up by younger Scottish MPs and not older ones. Welsh is official in Wales of course but again, it is not the working language of most institutions ,although legal documents would have a Welsh translation. The issue is that actual Welsh speakers are a minority in Wales. Northern Ireland is consistently in the grip of pro-UK politicians, so there is no real "Irish" language movement.
(7:40) Do they though...? Like W wasn't an official letter of the Swedish alphabet until very recently. The Estonian alphabet doesn't have C, Q, W, X and Y, and the Hungarian alphabet doesn't have Q, W, X, Y.
Hawaiian alphabet has only 12 letters but also symbols. We also have "PIDGEN ENGLISH". It works perfectly fine for us here in Hawai'i 👍🥰❣️ 💞ALOHA FROM HAWAI'I 💞🌹 LYSSA 🌹
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is a good example of why I think missionaries' greatest gift to foreign cultures is not the gift of Christianity, but the gift of literacy.
More or less. There's nothing wrong with being an oral society, but in today's world the floor was built by literary societies and so conform or go extinct, sadly. EDIT: To be clear I mean language extinction, not murder.
@@sion8 Today's world?? Writing systems have been around for centuries. Without writing, humans would never have the kind of math and science that allows us to travel into outer space, or into cyber space. There would be no RU-vid, no internet, no computers, no phones, no cars, no newspapers, no magazines, no books, . . . . . .
@@gregcarter8656 Ah… well yes, but many languages still don't have standard writing systems, which keeps them illiterate which leads to prejudice against still oral people.
@@sion8 And you'd like to eliminate such alleged prejudice by eliminating writing systems? Or by providing writing systems to those who lack one? Unfortunately, we humans vary greatly in morality, and immoral prejudices will likely be around as long as we humans are, regardless of the distribution of writing systems. Some folks don't want to read, or write, even though they can. Some prefer an "oral only" life, by free choice.
@@gregcarter8656 Oh, no! I love literacy, but we must also give the respect the oral tradicion has in various peoples around the world! Something similar to how Australia respects tradicion title via oral tradition the various peoples of Australia have had over their lands among other similar actions.
He called Pennsylvania German, "Pennsylvania Dutch" I'm from PA. I have NEVER heard anyone from here use "PA German". So you used the right one as far as I know ;D👍
The point he was making is that "Pennsylvania Dutch" is a dialect of German and as someone else pointed out the "Dutch" part is a corruption of "Deutch" (pronounced "doich") which means "German" in German.
Greetings from to Hawaii. there are purists I find that will correct anyone using a "w" sound in Hawai'ian instead of a "v" but I find most people aren't actually that strict about it as it is still intelligible and many speakers aren't native's anyways. Haole pizza is a fun thing to confuse people here though, it's just "Hawaiian pizza" but as it's actually a Canadian invention a few places call it haole or foreigner pizza.
@@vladprus4019 you just hear a lot of inconsistent pronunciation when you've been in Hawaii long enough, and some people are really up tight about the "correct" way to pronounce things. but it's language so there is no "correct" way just the most common and understandable ways. I actually get corrected by my own mother a lot of the time which is kind of funny.
@@vladprus4019 In many languages, there is NO DIFFERENCE between W and V. In English, they are different. Example 1: VARY means "change", but WARY means "aware, careful, suspecting, on the lookout". Example 2: VINE means "kind of plant", but WINE means "alcoholic fruit drink". In Hawaiian, IVI and IWI mean "bone". No difference. VAHO and WAHO mean "outside". No difference.
Another writing system made by missionaries primarily to spread Christianity was Canadian Aboriginal Syllibics, though they abandoned Latin script. What's interesting is that the Syllibics have been widely retained and embraced as unique parts of Cree and Inuit culture amongst some others.
It was one man and he based it on his knowledge of Devanagari and how it functioned. Originally it was just meant for Cree, but later spread to Inuit languages. Can't remember his name, but I know Wikipedia has an article on it. What I find a bit disappointing is that it didn't spread to Greenland, who speak an Inuit language, but that's mostly as a language nerd. Latin functions fine for it and that's because the Greenlanders reformed it in the 1970s to be better for them.
Alphabets are just one way of recording language, they’re not the default way or the most intuitive or robust, and talking about the letters instead of Hawaiian’s famously small set of sounds makes it look as if the missionaries are responsible here because of their minimalistic approach. It’s like crediting the photographer instead of the model and stylist. The letters = language problem is especially bad in the English-speaking world because of our historic spelling and extensive borrowing of other language’s orthography. It isn’t easy to escape, but it’s well worth it because once you can tell the instagram filter apart from the originao picture a whole new world is opened up.
I lived in Hawaii in Kaneohe on Oahu from 2005 till 2009. I miss it everyday. Outside of my home state of New York and Hometown of NYC, Hawaii is always in my heart. It's my second home state. It's beauty is unlike anywhere in the world...
@@sion8 The vowel a = Ah like in water, but not like in way. The vowel e = Eh as in bed, but not in bee. The vowel i is like the in did, not die. The vowel o = like in hope, not hoot. The vowel u = is like put, not up. Ah eh i oh u, and like the narrator says, consonants have to have a vowel ending. H, K, L, M, N, P, W. He ke la mu nu pi we. Also the W sound is more like a soft V , just a gentle off the lips sound, hardly noticeable, not a hard V, so Hawai'i sounds like Havai'i, not HaVai'i. The 'okina or glottal stop represents a missing letter, which can change the meaning of words if you don't use it properly. Think of a word with the 'okina with a k instead. Hawaiki, take out the k, and say it again, Hawai'i. Like the word for a type of lava, a'a, think of saying aka, then say it again without the k. To other Polynesians they still call it Hawaiki.
@@sion8 A E I O U H K L M N P W 'Okina... that is the Hawaiian alphabet. It was for anyone that knew both Hawaiian and English; In da end in no even dakine. If you know, you know but Inokea. Aloha!
Personally i wouldn't use the word, "push" because evangelism done right isn't a "pushing" it's more of a "suggesting." Or, "spreading." But it depends of course upon wether or not they're actually doing it right. What they did in Hawaii may well have been "pushing" rather than, "spreading" or "suggesting." I'm not actually familiar with how this particular branch attempts to spread their beliefs.
Wow I am from Idaho and I feel called out lol jk. Every state has their own culture and it is true some are more prevalent than others. Food Insider has many videos on different state cuisines.
I'm sorry if this may be controversial but the culture in Hawaiʻi and Idaho are not comparable, not even close. Idaho is merely a regional distinction, which is very similar to the neighbouring states. Hawaiʻi is an actual national identity that's completely separate from Idaho, Ohio, or any US states and closer to other Polynesian nations like Samoa or Aotearoa than to the USA. Idaho can't have any of that, because Idaho isn't an identity that existed for thousands of years. It's merely an administrative division created by the sellers. However there are some nationalities in modern day Idaho that actually do have a completely unique culture, unrelated to anything else : the Nez Percés, aka the *Nimíipuu* .
We don't have an official language for cultural reasons.. we're a nation of immigrants who spoke many languages when emigrating to the US. Now English national language debate is unnecessary and just a hot button issue to get both sides riled up. We all speak English, government is in English. It doesn't matter
Nowadays, but language has always been an issue. Dutch was one of the most spoken languages in New York State (it was Martin van Buren's native language), German was for a long time the second most spoken (a role Spanish has since taken over), specially in the Midwest, French was the most spoken language in Louisiana until about the late 19th century and was widely spoken in Northern New England, that's not even mentioning the various indigenous American languages! But because the 13 colonies were originally English-later-British colonies, there was no questions which language its elite knew, whom also happened to have written its declaration of independence and current constitution. Many of the English-only laws and amendments to state constitutions were done as a way to get rid of the other languages, many done during and after WWI because of the high anti-German sentiment building up over the previous decades, reinforced by WWII, which also punished Italian- and Japanese-speakers.
In Hawaiian speech, the sound of W and the sound of V are functionally one-and-the-same sound. No difference. In Hawaiian writing, it's more practical and more efficient to use just one letter (which has both sounds). This is true in some other languages too, beyond the Austronesian language family. In English spoken by Hindis, and Serbo-Croatians, I hear them mix up V and W.
I’m surprised that you didn’t pronounce Hawai‘i the way it is prounouced in the Hawaiian language (with the glottal stop) rather than the way that it is pronounced with and English accent
Every language has its own pronunciations of words, including words that are adopted and adapted from other languages. Thus, it is correct to use English pronunciations of Hawaiian words, when speaking in English. Likewise, it's correct to use Hawaiian pronunciations of English words, when speaking in Hawaiian. It works both ways. It's a 2-way street. It's a double-edged sword.
Japanese translated to english looks like... english, because... it's translated. Maybe you meant romanized japanese. Japanese written with latin alphabet.
@@evan-moore22 As a school librarian I’ve had to explain to my boss that we use standardized transliteration rules for cataloguing Cyrillic titles rather than translating them. It’s so easy for people to disregard the profound difference a couple middle syllables can makes in meanings. :)
Well that’s misleading… Hawaiian is spoken with a very simple consonantal system whereby many sounds are actually allophones and thus can be represented with one single letter as their occurrence is predictable…
Why did you portray Christian missionaries so extremely negatively in this video? I'm not Christian, but I'm sure that if you were to ask native Hawaiians or in general people from the third world who were christianized by missionaries, they would have a very positive opinion of those missionaries. At every opportunity you made all these jabs at missionaries saying they're forcing their religion onto other people and you made it seem as if converting other people's religions in inherently immoral
How’s welsh not have enough? They used w and y for extra vowels. I can’t tell if welsh and celtic influence is why y is sometimes a vowel in english or if that was something else.
When these people arrived in the US, there wasn't as strong of a distinction. People spoke a wide range of related languages across dozens of small countries scattered in the regions from the Netherlands to Eastern Europe, and they all called themselves some form of "Deutsch", "Dietsch", "Dutch", etc. With the unification of Germany it became easier to separate standard versions of these various languages like German, Dutch, Letzeburgisch, Schwizzer Deutsch, etc.
I've now arrived at that point in the video and understand the confusion. Many people in Pennsylvania are the descendants of Germans and still speak Low German, very common in the Mennonite communities around the world. However, the ancestors of the Pennsylvania Dutch arrived in America during a time period, when the Brits collectively called all Germanic people of Central Europe "Dutch". So, even though the Pennsylvania Dutch descended from Germans, the name just stuck.
@@kiga14 No, the distinction between Dutch and German was already clear early 17th century en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminology_of_the_Low_Countries#Dutch,_Diets_and_Duyts, way before the unification of Germany
Have you ever wondered why it's important to Christians that people can read the Bible? I mean besides the obvious spiritual benefits. If you look at the history of Christianity, there was a time when the chatholic church decided in their hubris that they should educate the people on what God actually meant. Which is obviously bad. Anyway, they wouldn't let anyone read it except monks, and even then you had to be amongst a select few. At some point however, (martin Luther) someone got ahold of an actual bible and decided that the Catholics weren't actually teaching what was in it. And really they weren't. They were teaching their altered version, of which they still do today. So you see, there was a time in history where no one but monks could read the bible. Interesting stuff right?
Love the video however, I don’t like the way you’re commenting to the missionaries/christian, just because you’re not christian it doesn’t mean that you can use negative words towards it.
There are already a few comments about it, but it feels like this video was one of your worse ones. A little too much “religion bad” and too little accurate information or pronunciations.
Certainly possible: A E I O U ア エ イ オ ウ Ā Ē Ī Ō Ū アー エー イー オー ウー Ha Ka La Ma Na Pa Wa ハ カ ラ マ ナ パ ワ AE AI AO AU EI EU OU アェ アィ アォ ア エィ エゥ オゥ The only "issue" I would see is that Ha and Pa are using the same base character, and it would look nicer if Hawaiian used a different base character for P, for example using the characters for T instead. Pa: タ Sample texts: kēia ʻike ʻana āna. = ケーイア ッイケ ッアナ アーナ。 He Hawaiʻi kēlā kaikamahine. = ヘ ハワィッイ ケーラー カィカマヒネ。
Hmm didn’t think of that. Though on the other hand, a lot of Japanese do find it relatively easy to pronounce Hawaiian words, just because of how similarly we pronounce our vowels in a broad way
yea fr its just made up. ive never met anyone from wyoming. never been to wyoming. couldnt name a single fact about wyoming, nor could i identify it on a map. its made up!! wake up america!!
McWhorter said that there are only two English dialects that became true (separate) languages: Louisiana Creole and Hawaiian Pidgin. So Hawaii has two "homegrown" languages that were strongly influenced by English speakers!
This reminds me a bit of the ITA that in the seventies was a different alphabet used to teach infants how too read and write. I'd love a bit of information about it.
Totally irrelevant to the Hawaiian ALPHABET which was created during the early years of the Kamehameha dynasty which was founded on the deliberate murders of thousands of Hawaiian men, women, and children, so that Kamehameha could STEAL all Hawaiian lands, often euphemized as "uniting" the islands.
Many Europeans languages do not use the letter K and W. Italian Alphabet uses 21 letters. Welsh Alphabet uses the Y and W as vowels, but doesn't use the letter W like Welsh does. Whoops, I edit my comment changing Polish to Welsh, it was originally incorrect.
@@oyoo3323 A meme from the PC version of a Call of Duty game. During a scene, the player's at a funeral and is told "Press F to pay respects". Now people on the internet simply type "F" if they want to "pay respects".
Excuse me sir, I'll give you some grace for not being from the US, but mention Idaho around here, and people's minds will be filled with images of potatoes!
The simplicity of the language reminds me of Korean. Hangul 한걸 (korean characters) were designed to be easy to learn (the story is actually really interesting). Its five basic consanants are actually designed off of the shape of the mouth when you make the sound. ㅁ (mieum) makes the M sound, so the character resembles lips being pursed. ㅇ (ieung) makes the -ng sound, which is made in the back of the throat, so the circular shape resembles the throat, etc. All other consanants are based on the five basic ones. For example, ㅂ (bieup), which makes a soft B or P sound, is also made using the lips, so it is derived from the letter ㅁ. ㅎ (hieut), the H sound, is derived from ㅇ as it also comes from the throat. Admittedly the vowels are a lot harder for a westerner to remember, since the two basic vowels, ㅣand ㅡ, are based on some sort of east asian philosophy I don't quite understand. Similar to the consanants, all other vowels are just the basic vowels but with extra lines. Because I don't get the philosophy though, how ㅏ(ah) is derived from ㅣ(ee) doesn't really make sense to me. Tl;dr: I studied Korean for six months because I found the language fascinating and saw vague similarities between Hangul and written Hawaiian.
What I’ve come across in the matter of the t-k l-r pronunciations and how it was described back then, is that some sounds were interchangeable and didn’t affect the core meaning of the word. A word like Kapu would be pronounced as Tabu, Tapu, Kabu, Kapu by different speakers and the core meaning stayed the same. Another example is the Name of Kamehameha II: Liholiho, sometimes it was written Lihiliho with an L and sometimes Rihoriho with an R. At least that’s how it was explained to me. And if that’s the case I would argue in favor of the missionaries as the sought to standardize the language and make it fit for mass literacy of the population. In fact all languages at some point or another go through a process of standardization where institutions decide on some core elements, and leave behind many regional and irregular characteristics. It is undeniable that this processes reflect a power struggle, like how Parisian French was chosen over all the other regional variations of the Langue D’Oil. Or how Dante’s version of the Tuscan dialect was chosen as the official language of the Italian republic, over the hundreds of regional dialects in the Italian peninsula. Standardization is an important process if you want to make a language fit for mass communication and education, even more so if you attempt to use it for such areas as law, medicine and politics where clarity is key. In mu opinion there tends to be too much hate towards the work of the missionaries and how the standardized Hawaiian, but I think the did a good job at creating a simple and functional writing system, easy to learn and use. My mother tongue is Spanish which is also a clearly phonetic language that’s pronounced the way it’s spelled, In my opinion languages with historical orthography and no clear rules in pronunciation just make it harder for learners. English for example makes no sense on how it’s pronounced, you basically need to learn it word by word. That’s why the spelling bee is so popular in english schools but not so in Spanish schools, in English you gotta learn word by word how it is written and pronounced, in soanish you hear it and you immediately know how to write it (here in Latin America we may have some problems with C. S Z since those sounds merged together as S, but in Spain they’re still distinct from one another)
