Lately I’ve noticed that some people - specifically ESPN and the good folks in Hawaii who hosted a Christmas day college football game there, although their are certainly others too - have taken to adding an unneeded apostrophe to the term Hawaii right between the I’s, so that the place is supposedly now spelled " Hawai’i ".
What’s up with that? Why make the change, and who decided to change it, and why don’t we spell it phonetically (Ha-why-yee), since its spelling is just an English bastardization of the old native Hawaiian language anyway.
This is from The Hawaiian Language and Hawaiian-ENglish Dictionary: A Complete Grammar Study by Henry P. Judd:
“The gutteral break represents the elision of k in other Polynesian dialects. It is indicated by the hamzah (’). The break is an essential part of the word.”
Interestingly, though, this particular book does not use the apostrophe in “Hawaii” or “Hawaiian.”
It gives you that extra air of sophistication to impress your worldliness on friends, family, associates, and those poor souls who just happen to be passing by.
Because phonetically it isn’t “Ha-why-yee” but “Hah-wah-ee-ee” with both final I sounds distinctly sounded, and an open juncture or (preferably) glottal stop between them. Precisionist usage calls for the apostrophe separating the I’s, though most common usage omits it, just as most people refer to the largest city in California by only two words from its official name, El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula.
I was under the impression, from hearing people there say it, that it was pronounced “Ha-VAH ee” with a guttural break between the second and third syllables.
Rubbish. Its official name is “The City of Los Angeles.” Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles de Porciúncula was the name of a river near which LA was founded (later just called el rio Porciúncula), but the settlement was actually named El Pueblo de la Reina de los Angeles in 1781. I doubt that anyone called it that for long, and it certainly hasn’t been official at any time during California’s statehood. Los Angeles is a part of Los Angeles County, and that’s certainly been its name since 1850.
They probably use an apostrophe because they haven’t got an okina, the thing like an upside-down apostrophe which indicates a glottal stop in Hawaiian.
Hawaii is pronounced “ha VAI ee”, and I do not believe the spelling is a Westernized one. In the Hawaiian language, the letter W is pronounced like a V almost always if it is not the first letter of the word. So Waikiki is pronounced Waikiki, but Halawa is pronounced Halava. I say almost always because I can think of an exception off the top of my head: the town of Wahiawa. The second W is pronounced the same as the first.
The Hawaiians did not have a written language before the missionaries came and so the Latin characters (with only the consonants hklmnpw) and the okina and kahako/macron make up the official written alphabet.
Kyla, linguists use the Arabic names of the characters ‘ayn ‘ and hamzah ’ for these two symbols wherever they appear in typography, regardless of which language it is.
