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Mikey wrote:Wow. You guys are the only Bond fans I've ever heard who didn't want to have George Lazenby drawn and quartered. Personally, I thought he was a hack Moore impersonator, at best.

Mark - I made a VERY short term study of Hawai'ian when I was there. Linguistics fascinates me, and the diversion of Hawai'ian from Polynesian is very interesting.

Did all the vowels make your throat ache as well? I don't know why mine does, but truely, after forcing three or four syllibles to link with vowels, by throat really DOES ache.

Mark wrote:Did all the vowels make your throat ache as well? I don't know why mine does, but truely, after forcing three or four syllibles to link with vowels, by throat really DOES ache.

Not really, but I was only there for 8 days and speaking English most of the time.

You didn't even trip up on hu'mu'hu'mu'nu'ku'nu'ku'apu'ah'ah?

Is that a real word?

I'll stick to my English thank you.

I think it's Hawaiian for "Damned Tourists."

It's the name of our state fish. See what I mean about all of the vowels? Names are pretty rough too. Two of the most famous Hawaiian historical figures are........

King Kamehameha

and

Queen Liliokalani

I had trouble with both of them. And when I first moved here, didn't I just love the "Likelike highway" I asked directions once, and pronounced it as it is spelled, and got laughed at. It's acutally pronounced lee-kay lee-kay

Damned confusing if you ask me.

Hey, I know who they are.
And now I remember the fish... in Picard's ready-room.

Man, Hawaiian sounds almost as screwy when it comes to pronunciation as Irish.

w is pronounced v............most i's are pronounced as e's.........and the broken vowels kill me. Another example...Ka'au'manu street. The vowels just seem to fight each other. But then there are only 11 letters in the Hawaiian alphebet.

I take it the "street" part isn't Hawaiian.

Correct. Thus the only thing I can easily say

Picard's fish was a lionfish, IIRC. The humuhumunukunukuapua'a is a reef triggerfish.

No, I learned that word very carefully because I became so obsessed with it. Hawai'ian uses a lot of repetition for emphasis - in a weird conincidence the word like (pronounced "lee-kay") means "similar" - the word for "identical" is simply likelike. The name of the fish above comes from a couple of words denoting "hog," and "grunting," I think, because of the shape fo the fish's snout and the sound it makes when removed from the water.

The trick I've found is to remember where the language comes from. The apostrophe represents a glottal stop, which is softened from the "k" phoneme of the original Polynesian, and the "k" in Hawai'ian descends from the Polynesian "t." The vowels generally only have one pronunciation each, so you don't have to worry too much about long or short sounds.

Do you speak Klingon, Mikey?