Awesome Hawaiian
Hawaiian Pronunciation, Anyone?
For choir at school, we were thinking of singing "Silent Night" in Hawaiian (with Christmas coming up). We were asked to find the lyrics, which was easy, but now that I look at this I don't know how in the world I am supposed to say this (let alone sing it)!
Any kind of help on any part of it would be awesome.
Thanks!
"Silent Night" in Hawaiian:
Po la`i e, po kamaha`o,
Maluhia, malamalama
Ka makuahine aloha e
Me ke keiki hemolele e
Moe me ka maluhia lani
Moe me ka maluhia lani
Po la`i e, po kamaha`o,
Oni na kahu hipa e
I ko ka lani nani no
Mele na `anela haleluia.
Hanau `ia Kristo ka haku.
Hanau `ia Kristo ka haku.
Po la`i e, po kamaha`o,
Keiki hiwahiwa aloha e,
Ka lama la`i mai luna mai
Me ka lokomaika`i makamae.
Iesu i kou hanau `ana.
Iesu i kou hanau `ana.
Luckily, the way Hawaiian is written is very straightforward. Most things are pronounced as spelled, but let me outline some things pertaining to Hawaiian phonology.
Firstly, every Hawaiian sound is also commonplace in English, except for the glottal stop. The glottal stop is that little... almost click that you may feel in your throat when you say "uhhhh". In Hawaiian that sound is used as a normal part of speech. Glottal stops aren't a real big deal when it comes to singing though. The letter "l" in malamalama represents a glottal stop, I believe.
The only other things you really need to know about Hawaiian are that it contains a few diphthongs that you might try to pronounce as two separate sounds. For example, "ai" is always the "ai" as in "Hawaii", "ei" is "a" as in "Kate". "au" is pronounced like the German "au" (as in Windau or Kaufland). "ou" is prounced like "oo". I'm sure you would normally assign these or similar pronunciations to these Hawaiian diphthongs but I can just see someone in your choir trying to pronounce them as separate vowels to sound exotic.
Remember that the purpose of the apostrophe in Hawaiian is to break diphthongs. Only in words like "la'ie" would you pronounce the a and the i separately.
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