Well, no, it’s not really accenting either. It’s a diacritical mark. Technically, that diacritical mark is called an okina in Hawai’ian and looks like an opening single quote (as opposed to an apostrophe which would generally look like a closing single quote).
No. The islanders usually do say “Havay-e”, and mainlanders do usually say “Huhwah-yee” but the islanders I know do not really regard this as a sign of ignorance or stupidity. And, they generally do not regard mainlanders saying it like they do as a real faux pas, either.
Just my own experiences, yours may vary.
They’re cool about it. If you’re there, just be yourself and say it like you’ve always said it. Just Hang Loose.
Edited the underlined, for a better pronunciation. Still can’t quite get the breathy first “H” sorry. Kind of a cross between “Huh” and “Hhhhh” and “(something in front of it)Vah-ee, which is the one that comes closest.”
I think it’s actually more a return to the traditional spelling. Someone correct me if I’m wrong. I remember in a Hawaiian studies learning that the the name Hawaii comes from Java iki, son of java and then to hawaiki and finally Hawai’i. So the Hawaii spelling was just an evolution of the name. I would guess the greater emphasis on hawaiian culture bring with it the return to a more traditional spelling.
My middle school geography teacher (who lived in Hawaii for a time) told me that the deal with the Hawaiian language is that every single vowel is pronounced, so when you saw a Hawaiian word written in English, pairs of vowels had the glottal stop between them. So “aa” (the crumbly sharp lava rock) is pronounced “ah-ah”, and the popular '60s “muumuu” Hawaiian dress you’d pronounce properly as “moo-oo moo-oo”.
I think the “Hawai’i” spelling, with the apostrophe, is just a way to clue the “haole” in. Much like the written Hawaiian language itself.
Now, now…this is the Straight Dope where we enjoy being precise about these things. The glottal stop – the okina in our case – is considered a consonant in all languages, so I think the distinction, though fine, is important. We just don’t have a normal way of indicating a glottal stop in English, so our convention is to use that tick mark/single quote. But this mark performs a very different function from an accent mark or a punctuation mark, so I thought it important to point that out.
You can even make the argument that this is, in fact, a spelling change of a sort. “Hawaii” is pronounced differently than “Hawai’i” The tick mark represents a consonant for which we have no equivalent in English. It’s the same sound made between the two syllables of “uh-oh.”
Thanks all. I didn’t realise that it was more of a pronunciation thing to emphasise the double i vowel. All I could see was an extra apostrophe appearing for no apparent reason.