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Published: February 25th 2009
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Mauna Kea
The "white" mountain shines in the morning sun. Morning came early and bright sun shone after a dreary night.
Ann sent me for the camera because, out over Coconut Island where we had Happy Hour, rose the majestic snow-capped peak of Mauno Kea. It was a gorgeous sight.
I must confess I wish the hotel had assigned us a room on that side of the building instead of overlooking the trees.
But, hey, we were in Hawai'i. And we could always walk out on the terrace on that side of the building to enjoy the view of Mauna Kea, Coconut Island, and Hilo Bay. . . and Mauna Loa and downtown Hilo . . . .
After breakfast, Susan taught us a couple Hawai'ian songs, "Hukilau Hula" and "My Little Grass Shack." She is good singer and teacher. That little musical interlude led into a lesson in the language of Hawai'i.
There are the standard five vowels we know from English which are pronounced in the Latin way, "a" as in "ah," "e" as in "eh," "i" as in "ee," "O" as in "oh," and "u" as in "oo." There are only seven consonants, h-k-l-m-n-p-w. However, because of different ethnic influences, sometimes the "k"
Another view
On top of the mountain are astronomical and other facilities. Click on the picture to see them. is pronounced as a "t," "l" is pronounced as an "r," "p" is pronounced as a "b," and "w" is pronounced as a "v."
The street signs all use the standard spellings. About the only variation that Susan and Rob used was "v" for "w." That meant we were in Havai'i.
Another feature of the language is the use of an okina which looks like an apostrophe or a comma on a high. It indicates a glottal break between two vowels. It is not quite a consonant and it is only used to separate a vowel used twice together, as in Havai'i.
Okinas do not usually get used on street signs.
There's more to the language, of course, but these are the things we found the most important in seeing a word and pronouncing it.
The language has a fun trait: it is not unusual for strings of vowels together unencombered with consonants.
The word "heiau" has been used with respect to Coconut Island. It is pronounced "hay-ow" or "hay-yow." I'll discuss the meaning later.
Many Hawai'ian words are compound, made up of smaller words. Like German, Hmong, and many other languages, these
combined words take on their own meaning in time but the shorter components give a clue to that meaning.
For example, a foreigner is "ha ole." "Ha" means "breath" and "ole" means "without." An outlander, a Caucasian, someone from the other side of the island, or even someone outside the family could be considered to not have the essential breath of life in them. Practically, of course, others often have bad breath because of their diets. That meant everyone in our group but Susan was a "howly," as it is pronounced. Gladly I report that I noticed no bad breath in our group over the three weeks of our program!
"Ha" is a major word: Hawai'i, "aloha," "mahalo" (thank you), and "ha ole."
With this linguistic background under our belts, we were bused down to Lyman Museum to spend much of the day learning more about the Islands.
The museum has a rich collection of artifacts, demonstrations, and materials that say a great deal about the culture, history, geology, and biology. The docents were knowledgeable and hospitable. The museum is worth much more time than we had for it.
Next door is a house which
was built by the Lymans, among the first Christian missionaries to the Islands.
After lunch on the grounds, we spent a couple hours hearing about the history of the Islands. Unfortunately, jet lag hit and I absorbed what little I did by osmosis.
We took a trip out to Rainbow Falls. It was a pleasant sight, though the sun was behind late afternoon clouds and we saw no rainbows. The colorful flowers in the trees also did not come out in our photos but were a real treat.
Being from Florida, we found the the weather was very similar and we were not surprised at the amount of tropical blooming flowers. Rather, they made us feel at home.
Supper back at the hotel was a surprise. The cook thought we were supposed to have the same meal as we'd had the night before. It tasted good the second time and more of us discovered the soft-serve ice cream which eased the tension!
We signed up for activities on the free day later in the week. Among the choices were a helicopter ride Ann talked me into and a tour of tsunami damage and a museum
Ann wanted to see. Two other possibilities were offered, one to an astronomy center and another to a botanical garden.
We were asleep by 8:30.
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Marty
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learned something
I learned something new from your blog. I didn't know the click on this picture to see it larger feature. I must have not read all the directions at some point