{"id":2399,"date":"2012-06-24T22:00:07","date_gmt":"2012-06-25T02:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/?p=2399"},"modified":"2024-12-03T16:58:59","modified_gmt":"2024-12-03T21:58:59","slug":"aloha-is-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/?p=2399","title":{"rendered":"Aloha is Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Linda Burton posting from Honolulu, Hawaii <\/em>\u2013 \u201cAloha is love,\u201d reads the first line of the children\u2019s book entitled Let\u2019s Learn the Hawaiian Alphabet (ISBN 1-59700-102-3, author Patricia Murray, illustrator Sharon Carter)<\/em>. We\u2019ve asked everyone \u201cWhat does \u201caloha\u201d mean?\u201d and every reply has been different. It could mean hello or goodbye, it could simply be a greeting, or it could mean \u201cI love you.\u201d Hmmm, a word to use with care! Every tour guide and every tourist spot has nudged the crowd to shout it out \u2013 A LOW HA! And we always fail the test. \u201cNot very good!\u201d they tell us, so we get a little louder. Still, a word has to have meaning to you when you say it, or it doesn\u2019t sound like you really mean it, so ka-chung, the tour guide shakes his head and laughs. Kayla and I wanted to learn some real Hawaiian words, and use them properly. \u201cMahalo\u201d we try to remember to say for \u201cThank you\u201d and sometimes we get a smile in return. We\u2019ve studied the street signs to get familiar with spelling, and Hawaiian names. \u201cThere are only twelve letters in the Hawaiian alphabet,\u201d Kuka told us. Kuka was our soft-spoken driver on Saturday, delivering us safely to the Polynesian Cultural Center in Laie. Kuka went through the vowel sounds with us as we rode north; Vanna\u2019s Wheel of Fortune<\/em> would sound different here though the letters look the same. \u201cU\u201d is not \u201cYou,\u201d it is \u201cOo\u201d \u2013 we know not to say \u201cyou-ka-lay-lee\u201d any more! But back to the book. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s commonly stated that the Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters; 5 vowels and 7 consonants. Vowels are A, E, I, O, U; consonants are H, K, L, M, N, P, W. The \u201cOkina\u201d is that backwards apostrophe you see in many Hawaiian words separating vowels; it is considered the 13th<\/sup> letter, used as a consonant; it changes both the sound and meaning of a word. An example is given in the book: Kui, to string, is pronounced \u201ckooee.\u201d But Ku\u2019i, to hammer, is pronounced \u201ckoo-ee.\u201d<\/p>\n

The state of Hawaii is the only state of 50 to have two official languages. Using the Hawaiian language as a medium of education was outlawed in 1896, and legal constraints against its use were maintained by territorial and US state governments until 1986. The 1970\u2019s brought a new focus to the revitalization and love\u00a0of the Hawaiian language and Hawaiian became an official language by a state constitutional convention in 1978.<\/p>\n

Section 4. English and Hawaiian shall be the official languages of Hawaii, except that Hawaiian shall be required for public acts and transactions only as provided by law. [Add Const Con 1978 and election Nov 7, 1978]<\/em><\/p>\n

Today any state senator or representative may speak in either language when the state legislature is in session; there is no translation required from one to the other; it is recorded exactly as spoken. Although the teaching of Hawaiian is still a controversial issue within the state, and there is a scarcity of certified teachers of the language, in 2002 the Hilo campus of the University of Hawaii awarded the first master\u2019s degree completed entirely in the Hawaiian language.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The motto of the state appears on the state seal in Hawaiian: “Ua mau ke ea o ka \u2018aina i ka pono;\u201d translated to English it is \u201cthe life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.\u201d It is interesting to note that 27 other states have a motto in a language other than English; California \u2013 Greek, Maryland \u2013 Italian, Minnesota \u2013 French, Montana \u2013 Spanish, Washington \u2013 Chinook, and 22 states have a motto in Latin. Some states officially designated a motto by an act of the legislature; others have their motto as an element of their state seal. The motto E Pluribus Unum, Latin for \u201cOne from many,\u201d was approved for use on the Great Seal of the United States in 1782.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Linda Burton posting from Honolulu, Hawaii \u2013 \u201cAloha is love,\u201d reads the first line of the children\u2019s book entitled Let\u2019s Learn the Hawaiian Alphabet (ISBN 1-59700-102-3, author Patricia Murray, illustrator Sharon Carter). We\u2019ve asked everyone \u201cWhat does \u201caloha\u201d mean?\u201d and every reply has been different. It could mean hello or goodbye, it could simply be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4586,669],"tags":[722,724,725,721,723,726,727,714,652],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2399"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2399"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2410,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2399\/revisions\/2410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}