# When did the US pronounciation of Hawai'i change? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 20, 2019, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965 "2019-08-20T21:45:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![bardos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bardos/32/1069_2.png) [@bardos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bardos)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2019, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965/21 "2019-08-21T17:47:17Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > Toke yo. Sounds like a Spanish weed smoker ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2019, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965/22 "2019-08-21T19:57:16Z")
My understanding, taken from a museum somewhere in Hawaiian, is that there were many Hawaiian dialects. Not unusual for an unwritten language scattered among many islands. The w/v are the same phoneme, but the pronunciation varied by dialect and maybe some other rules, like adjacent vowels. As the language has been reinvigorated from near extinction, the dialectal differences are being lost. Which is probably a good thing for the long-term survival of the language. And of course, any living language is going to change over time anyway. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2019, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965/23 "2019-08-21T20:08:03Z")
In the 1800s, so many Hawaiians were, um, “drafted” into working in the mines and such on the US west coast that this depleted the Islands’ work force. So men from Japan were brought in to work the fields and ended up being a significant factor in the mix there. ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2019, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965/24 "2019-08-21T20:31:44Z")
My mother pronounced it differently than anyone else I have ever heard, and (it being my mother) I assumed she was WRONG, so I never say the word, at all. She called it “Huh-VAH-yuh,” real breathy, and she said she knew this was right because my father was stationed there for awhile, so that was the correct way. And maybe that is how people said it, in 1940. As I said, I’ve never heard one single other person say it that way, including other people who’ve lived on that very base. She also pronounced “Nazi” as “nozzie.” Because that’s definitely the right way to pronounce it. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2019, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965/25 "2019-08-21T20:36:24Z")
Gomer Pyle said “ha WY yer” ---
**Author:** ![Mangosteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Mangosteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangosteen)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2019, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965/26 "2019-08-21T23:37:22Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > In the 1800s, so many Hawaiians were, um, “drafted” into working in the mines and such on the US west coast that this depleted the Islands’ work force. So men from Japan were brought in to work the fields and ended up being a significant factor in the mix there. Not at all what I have heard from local Hawaiians during many conversations while living in the islands. The local Hawaiians had long established families and self sufficient villages where they harvested crops from their gardens and fish from the sea. They had no interest in working on the plantations that where started in the early 1800’s. No attempt was ever made to enslave them. Male Chinese workers were brought in on limited time work contracts, but many choose to stay and establish families with the local native population. This actual saved the native population as they were dying out from all the foreign diseases brought in by the newly arrived immigrants. (Because of this life saving “mixing”, you will never find a true native Hawaiian although you will find people claiming to be.) About 50 years later Japanese workers were brought in to the plantations along with Portuguese, Korean, Puerto Rican, Okinawan (“We are not Japanese!”) and Filipinos. Many generations now have passed, which means you will rarely if ever find a “pure” member of any of these groups. The Japanese may be the exception as even today their children are encouraged to find Japanese spouses. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2019, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965/27 "2019-08-22T00:09:14Z")
> [@Mangosteen](#): > > Not at all what I have heard from local Hawaiians during many conversations while living in the islands. > > The local Hawaiians had long established families and self sufficient villages where they harvested crops from their gardens and fish from the sea. They had no interest in working on the plantations that where started in the early 1800’s. No attempt was ever made to enslave them. Male Chinese workers were brought in on limited time work contracts, but many choose to stay and establish families with the local native population. This actual saved the native population as they were dying out from all the foreign diseases brought in by the newly arrived immigrants. (Because of this life saving “mixing”, you will never find a true native Hawaiian although you will find people claiming to be.) About 50 years later Japanese workers were brought in to the plantations along with Portuguese, Korean, Puerto Rican, Okinawan (“We are not Japanese!”) and Filipinos. Many generations now have passed, which means you will rarely if ever find a “pure” member of any of these groups. The Japanese may be the exception as even today their children are encouraged to find Japanese spouses. This was one reason there was resistance to Hawaiian statehood: the southerners in the Senate didn’t like the idea of the racial mixing (also, they didn’t want Republican Hawaii to join the US, and didn’t agree until Democratic Alaska was granted statehood.\*) I remember reading during the fight for the Civil Rights act, a southerner asked one of the representatives from Hawaii how’d they like it if a Black man moved next door to him. The rep was about to give the usual refutation, but stopped when he realized the family next door to him _was_ Black. \*You read that right. Things have changed. ---
**Author:** ![Rysto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecccb3/32.png) [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2019, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965/28 "2019-08-22T02:47:07Z")
> [@Mangosteen](#): > > The word “Tokyo” might have gone through the same WWII change. Before the war few people used it in their day to day conversations. During the war and up to today, non-Japanese people continue to pronounce “Tokyo” with three syllables. It really has only two. “Toe-key-o” is wrong. It should be pronounced more like “Toe-keyo” Try to combine the two sounds into one “Key-o, keyo”. “Toe keyo”. It’s basically the same consonant as in “cute” or “queue”, but with an o sound rather than a u sound, is it not? ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2019, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965/29 "2019-08-22T06:05:10Z")
Wrong, **RC**. Hawaii was always Democratic and Alaska was always Republican. Congress had to compromise by admitting both in the same year to keep the party balance in the Senate. We just had the 60th anniversary of Hawaii becoming a state. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2019, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965/30 "2019-08-22T06:12:10Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > Wrong, **RC**. Hawaii was always Democratic and Alaska was always Republican. Alaska started out with two Democratic senators, a Democratic member of the House, and a Democratic governor. (Hawaii was more mixed, there were two of each in those offices.) ---
**Author:** ![kitap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9e5f3/32.png) [@kitap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitap)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2019, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965/31 "2019-08-22T06:48:40Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > My understanding, taken from a museum somewhere in Hawaiian, is that there were many Hawaiian dialects. Not unusual for an unwritten language scattered among many islands. The w/v are the same phoneme, but the pronunciation varied by dialect and maybe some other rules, like adjacent vowels. As the language has been reinvigorated from near extinction, the dialectal differences are being lost. Which is probably a good thing for the long-term survival of the language. And of course, any living language is going to change over time anyway. When we were vacationing in Hawaii I got a book on the place names of Hawaii. It was originally written somewhere around 1950-60 if I remember correctly and in one of the notes the authors said one of the authors had run across an elderly Hawaiian living in some remote area who used either the “r” sound or the “t” sound while speaking Hawaiian- I don’t remember which. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2019, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965/32 "2019-08-22T11:19:23Z")
Wikipedia: > [@](#): > > It is notable that Hawaiian has allophonic variation of [t] with [k],[82][83][84][85] [w] with [v],[86] and (in some dialects) [l] with [n].[87] The [t]–[k] variation is quite unusual among the world’s languages, and is likely a product both of the small number of consonants in Hawaiian, and the recent shift of historical \*t to modern [t]–[k], after historical \*k had shifted to [ʔ]. In some dialects, /ʔ/ remains as [k] in some words. These variations are largely free, though there are conditioning factors. /l/ tends to [n] especially in words with both /l/ and /n/, such as in the island name Lānaʻi ([laːˈnɐʔi]–[naːˈnɐʔi]), though this is not always the case: ʻeleʻele or ʻeneʻene “black”. The [k] allophone is almost universal at the beginnings of words, whereas [t] is most common before the vowel /i/. **[v] is also the norm after /i/ and /e/, whereas [w] is usual after /u/ and /o/. After /a/ and initially, however, [w] and [v] are in free variation.**[88] ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2019, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965/33 "2019-08-22T14:30:08Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Wikipedia: > > **After /a/ and initially, however, [w] and [v] are in free variation** Was coming to post the same. It is in line with what Pleonast posted about dialectal differences in post #22. As things stand right this second, /v/ in _Hawaii_ is correct. /w/ is also correct. There may, of course, be stylistic markings (e.g. “_Only an outisder would say it with a W!!!_”). I’m a little surprised the ubiquitous pronunciation with the /w/ didn’t achieve critical mass even in Hawai’i itself decades ago, especially under the influence of /w/ in other Hawaiian words (even if /w/ is more common word-initially). ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2019, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965/34 "2019-08-23T13:01:07Z")
> [@Lord\_Feldon](#): > > Alaska started out with two Democratic senators, a Democratic member of the House, and a Democratic governor. (Hawaii was more mixed, there were two of each in those offices.) To clarify, for anyone who doesn’t already know this: the two parties have switched positions over the relevant period of time. The Republicans used to be the more liberal party, the Democrats the more conservative; though both, at least when those states were admitted, had a much wider range of opinion in their members than is usual today. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2019, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965/35 "2019-08-23T15:23:16Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > To clarify, for anyone who doesn’t already know this: the two parties have switched positions over the relevant period of time. The Republicans used to be the more liberal party, the Democrats the more conservative; though both, at least when those states were admitted, had a much wider range of opinion in their members than is usual today. Republican dominance in Hawaiian politics had nothing to do with liberalism. The Republicans represented the industrial oligarchy of the Big Five sugarcane processing companies. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2019, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965/36 "2019-08-23T17:40:00Z")
I watch a lot of old movies, and I mostly hear the actors pronouncing it Huh-WHY-yuh or something similar. I’ve rarely heard the ‘v’ variation. ---
**Author:** ![EdelweissPirate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8491ac/32.png) [@EdelweissPirate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdelweissPirate)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2019, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965/37 "2019-08-23T18:33:08Z")
My father was born in 1940 at a hospital in St. Louis, MO. His pronunciation (and his tastes in general) skew about 20 years older than he is. When I describe an ice cream dessert with whipped cream and chocolate sauce—a sundae—I pronounce its name as a homophone with “Sunday.” My dad, however, pronounces it as “sun-duh.” I get the impression that many less-cosmopolitan people of his generation and older tend to pronounce any trailing vowel combination (diphthong or no) with a schwa sound. I read it as a kind of enunciative hand-waving, throwing out a phoneme that doesn’t sound as obviously wrong as some alternatives. My dad claims his pronunciation is a St. Louis thing, pointing out that many locals pronounce “Missouri” as “Missouruh.” But that only illustrates another case of foreign-sounding vowel endings being replaced with a schwa sound. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2019, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965/38 "2019-08-25T06:26:32Z")
> [@carrps](#): > > I watch a lot of old movies, and I mostly hear the actors pronouncing it Huh-WHY-yuh or something similar. That’s close to how my mother, who came from Ozark hillbilly stock, would pronounce it. Sounded very close to “How are ya.” ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2019, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965/39 "2019-08-25T07:24:47Z")
> [@bardos](#): > > Sounds like a Spanish weed smoker Or Jesse on _Breaking Bad_. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2019, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965/40 "2019-08-26T00:42:27Z")
Here are [radio bulletins from the attack on Pearl Harbor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-asDrt7ZMc). The announcers clearly pronounce it “Hawaii” (although announcer John Daly mispronounced the island as “oh-HAH-oo” the first several times he said it.) My guess is the pronunciation changed irrevocably at about 2:30 p.m. Eastern time, Dec. 7, 1941, when the first bulletins went out. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-us-pronounciation-of-hawaii-change/838965.md?page=1)