WORD IMPERFECT

WORD IMPERFECT: As we perused the morning Honolulu newspapers in anticipation of soon perusing the Honolulu newspaper we uncharacteristically stopped at June Watanabe’s Kokua Line today after reading the hed stating State's official spelling of 'Hawaii' omits okina

Here on Kaua`i that’s not true with a council resolution passed about a decade ago that tried to assure that all official government uses of Hawaiian words are spelled correctly.

Being a writer in Hawai`i is fraught with pitfalls for those without a basic knowledge of the Hawaiian language-`Olelo Hawai`i- and although ours came from a couple of semesters of instruction almost 30 years ago there are things that we learned from our kumu, Ilei Beneamina, that stick in our mind.

One is about the so-called diacritical marks- the kahako and `okina.

Back to the article- and the reason we bring it up- it answers the question of why the name of the state is spelled without an `okina on the news state drivers’ licenses

But Watanabe’s answer leaves a lot to be desired. She says:

The answer is that "Hawai'i" is not the state's official spelling... Hawaii, as do all other U.S. jurisdictions, follows the driver's license/ID card design specifications set forth by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators "to ensure nationwide standardization of data elements," explained Dennis Kamimura, administrator of the city Division of Motor Vehicle Licensing.

The guidelines do not allow for punctuation marks to appear on any printed data element, such as the name of the state, the name of the licensee, street name, etc., he said.

"However, if the official spelling of Hawaii is changed to Hawai'i, it may be possible to change the spelling of our driver's license," he said.

The problem is that the `okina is not a “punctuation mark”- it’s an actual letter to be treated as a vowel for all intents and purposes.

Watanabe seems to have missed that even though she questioned an associate professor of Hawaiian language at UH-Manoa.

It’s been one of our pet peeves over the years and brings up another more important one that journalists and regular scribes around the state - including many dedicated to preserving and perpetuating Hawaiian culture- set off on a daily basis.

It’s the use of a possessive apostrophe in Hawaiian words, especially along with the use of an `okina.

We cringe every time we see something like “Hawai`i’s” or “Kaua`i’s” people because the Hawaiian language has no possessive case. You can say “the home of Kimo” – ka hale ‘o Kimo” but there is no way to say “Kimo’s home”.

Just as there is no verb “to be” there is no verb “to have” in the Hawaiian language as there are in most.

We remember as a young impetuous pup grilling Beneamina- who, being from Ni`ihau and having attended UH speaks both Ni`ihau and UH Hawaiian fluently- about whether to include the `okina when we were using the possessive apostrophe for Hawaiian words.

She simply wouldn’t give us an answer except to say that Hawaiian words should be written in Hawaiian only.. and spelled correctly.

At first, as a writer in English we were unwilling to accept that when writing in English we couldn’t at least use an English-ized spelling- without the `okina’- to accommodate the apostrophe and still be respectful of the language.

At first we thought that it’s really absolutely impossible to avoid using possessives apostrophes but after a while it became apparent that with a little wordsmithing there were no situations where we couldn’t accommodate the respect the Hawaiian language deserves and alter the sentence structure to say “the people of Hawai`i” instead of “Hawai`i’s people” or even “Hawaii’s people”.

That of course has a related corollary- the inexplicable use of the `okina in the words “Hawaiian” and “Kauaian” which aren’t even Hawaiian words. And don’t get us started on the pluralization of Hawaiian words like “heiaus” or “kanakas”.

So please all you writers out there- have a little respect and stop using the apostrophe in Hawaiian words and the okina in non-Hawaiian words. You’ll find it’s an easy accommodation that will become second nature after a while.