Talk:Hawaiian alphabet

Two questions

Why a redirect from "Hawaiian alpabet"? If this is not simply an incorrect spelling than this should be mentioned somewhere in the article.
I assume that the writing system was not "developed on January 7, 1822" but rather before that date and published on it?
Peter Schmitt 09:16, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't remember making a redirect from alpabet, but I do remember making one for Alphabet, with an uppercase A... I'll take a look, and see whats up with that...

I'm not 100% on the developed on date, but I think it refers to the actual date it was developed. I'd rather not expand on that until I can find more sources to clarify.Drew R. Smith 09:22, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry -- it was Hawaiian Alpabet Peter Schmitt 09:34, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

That is very strange. I could have sworn I'd put it on the Alphabet, not Alpabet... I guess I'll speedydelete it...Drew R. Smith 09:37, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I've deleted Alpabet and moved the redirect to Alphabet. (But actually, I don't think we normally redir from uppercase to lowercase for ordinary words... any reason to do so here?) Caesar Schinas 09:39, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know, alphabet is not normally capitalised. But, (and I've done this many times myself) people will capitalise it anyway when they are trying to search for articles regarding a specific alphabet.Drew R. Smith 09:45, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

But in the search, capitalisation doesn't matter. That's why we only normally redirect for different spellings, not different capitalisations. Caesar Schinas 10:03, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Good to know! Peter Schmitt 10:41, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Origins and Classification

I think the opening line of the article should be changed, mostly because we do know about the historical origins of Hawai'ian as a spoken language. It is a member of the Austronesian family, and we can trace many aspects of its development through the comparative method.
Also, I feel uncomfortable with categorizing the Hawai'ian alphabet as a subset of the English alphabet. Dustin Bowers 17:38, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Seconded on both counts. John Stephenson 08:13, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

It is a subset of the english alphabet. It was created using symbols taken drectly from the english alphabet in order to make it easier for the missionaries to more easily translate it. If you look you'll find no characters that aren't present in the english alphabet.

As a spoken language, with no written language until recently, we can't know for sure when the language broke off from whatever language it came from. As far as I know, we don't even definitively know which language it came from. Sure there are many theories out there, the most prominent of which is that it came from Tahitian. But the article isn't about the Language, its about the alphabet, and so shouldn't include much info about the language itself.When I finally get around to writing Hawaiian language, I will include in full detail all the different theories.Drew R. Smith 08:14, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Changed to relatively unkown. Drew R. Smith 08:18, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I understand that we can say that the symbols are the ones the creators learned for their own language(s), but it is confusing and misleading to call it a "subset" of the English alphabet. For example, though the letters themselves are common to English, Hawaiian and many other languages, the grapheme-phoneme (letter-sound) correspondances are not. As a "subset", that would imply that the orthography functions like English too. But the two languages are completely different. John Stephenson 08:59, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

As I understand it, a subset is simply an alphabet derived from the original. I'm not as well educated in Linguistics as you are, so if I'm wrong on that basic assumption please correct me. Once we clear up the defenition of a "subset" then we can determine if the Hawaiian alphabet is a subset of the english alphabet.Drew R. Smith 09:38, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't see "subset" anywhere in the article. The infobox states that the Enlish alphabet is the parent alphabet. If this is what the debae is about, I don't see the problem. The hawaiian alphabet was taken from the English alphabet.Drew R. Smith 09:42, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

But it implies that written Hawaiian is a form of the English alphabet. It would be more accurate to say that the letters came from the Roman alphabet, with different letter-sound correspondences. John Stephenson 09:48, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

But they didn't come directly from the Roman alphabet. The came from the Roman alphabet through the English alphabet. There are no roman characters used in the hawaiian alphabet that werent first used by the English alphabet. The missionaries adapted the english alphabet, specifically choosing not to use the roman alphabet, for simplicity of use.Drew R. Smith 10:16, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Keep in mind that even though the Wade-Giles system was developed by English speakers using characters used by English, nobody calls Wade-Giles an anglicization of Chinese, but a romanization. The hawaiian alphabet isn't even using typically English modifications of the roman script, like the "th" digraph (mostly because it can't..., no dental fricative there).Dustin Bowers 19:42, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Also, the addition of vowels with macrons is something we can say attests an "extra-English influence". The character inventory is not strictly English.Dustin Bowers 19:54, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

As a non-linguist I want to ask: Does "alphabet" mean the set of characters (glyphs) used? If so, then it obviously is derived from the English (or Latin or Roman) alphabet as a subset plus diacritics. If, however, "alphabet" stands for the phonems, then the origin of the language is important. Peter Schmitt 00:28, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

'Alphabet' means a particular kind of writing system, roughly speaking one that writes 'phonemes', represented by individual letters or groups of letters. It contrasts with other systems such as a 'syllabary' (writes syllables) or a logographic script (writes words). English and Hawaiian use the same script (the shapes of the symbols), the same writing system (alphabetic) but different orthography (the rules of spelling, diacritics, punctuation, sound-letter correspondances, etc.). A good source for this is Cook & Bassetti (2005: 3). John Stephenson 03:27, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Sound-Letter Correspondences

For anyone feeling enthusiastic, it would be a good call to describe what the letters correspond to phonetically. Dustin Bowers 19:44, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

What exactly do you mean?Drew R. Smith 04:02, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

I mean that we should describe what sounds of the spoken language are represented by the letters. Does "e" represent a mid-high or a mid-low unrounded front vowel? Does "w" represent a labio-velar glide or a labio-dental approximant?Dustin Bowers 07:07, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

And some examples of words written in this alphabet would also be nice (perhaps geographical names?). Peter Schmitt 00:23, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, the names of the Islands are already written in Hawai`ian. Hawai`i (the big island), Maui (The Valley Isle), Kaho`olawe (The Target Isle), Lāna`i (The Pineapple Isle), Moloka`i (The Friendly Isle), O`ahu (The Gathering Place, and home of the capital Honolulu), Kaua`i (The Garden Isle), and Ni`ihau (The Forbidden Isle). Of course if you wanted some words that few people use, you could have humuhumunukunukuāpua`a which is the state fish (Reef Triggerfish). There is also āloha, which basicaly means whatever you want it to, though the first defenition you'll find is hello, followed by goodbye, followed by love, followed by sadness. The language is very complicated, and the "one syllable- one sound" that the missionaries where trying for kind of made it more complicated. A lot of understanding the spoken language is in the ability to read body language (aloha said with a frown generally means goodbye) and being able to catch the spoken difference between kou (you) and ko`u (me).Drew R. Smith 03:53, 21 June 2009 (UTC)