This quick and lively tour of the Hawaiian language begins by uncovering its fascinating and often controversial history. With the help of a clear and concise guide to pronunciation, learn the importance of the okina () and the kahako (macron) and how these marks affect the meaning as well as the pronunciation of words. Helpful vocabulary lists introduce words heard and seen most often in place names, in restaurants, and in Hawaiian songs—including those commonly mispronounced even by life-long Hawaii residents. The author also discusses ongoing efforts to preserve Hawaiian as a living language through language-teaching programs.
Albert J. Schütz, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, has been engaged in Fijian linguistic research since 1960. His first fieldwork, a dialect geography, involved collecting and analyzing data from 105 villages over the entire group. Sixty villages from the main island of Viti Levu were the focus of his PhD dissertation. In 1971 he was appointed Director of a monolingual dictionary project in Suva, a position that he held until 1979. With the help and advice of the dictionary staff, he continued to work on a grammar, The Fijian Language (1985), the predecessor to the present work. From 1962 to the present, he has published 40 books, monographs, articles, and reviews on Fijian linguistic topics. They include: a full-scale grammar, teaching materials for the Peace Corps (with Rusiate T. Komaitai), materials for workshops for Fijian teachers, language history and biography, a language primer for visitors, papers on sociolinguistics and language change, loanwords, dialectology, phonetics and phonology, lexicography, miscellaneous grammatical and phonological topics, and an e-book with words and phrases pronounced by a native speaker.
