"So, Why Did You Decide to Learn Hawaiian?"

I was born in Montana. I grew up in Missouri. I don't have a drop of Kanaka Maoli blood in my body. The first time I went to Hawai'i, I was about six months old, the last time, about six years. That was on Maui for a week, and there were rainbows every day. I was afraid to go into the ocean until the very last day and then I cried because we had to leave and I'd just discovered it. I haven't been there since... so why this haole who knew nothing about hawaiian language, history or culture suddenly now learning all about it? Well, this is the long version.

Okay, so after I met Turquoise (as a 14 year old and homeschooler) I was obsessively reading every book about dolphins that I could find. One of these was Dolphin Days; the life and times of the spinner dolphins, by Dr Kenneth C Norris, which I got from the library. It detailed his thirty year project studying the Spinners in Kealakekua Bay (where Capt James Cook was killed, for those of you intereted in history &c)... there was some local slang mixed in, as there will be in most any story with a Hawaiian setting, and I realized, hey, wow, this is a real language. At the time my only contact with foreign language was when my parents decided that it would be of great use to me to learn Latin. That experiment ended rather miserably.. learning a rather ugly, un-poetic (in my humble opinion), dead language (belonging to a culture I never particularly cared for) from a fat old text book was just not my idea of a good time. I finally put my foot down and refused to go any farther, and furthermore rather rashly decided that I was uninterested in foreign languages in general (no great comfort to my parents, who kept mentioning how almost all colleges require so many years of a foreign language). So when I started trying to find information on Hawaiian, they were rather enthusiastic, much as I assured them that I was making no predictions, promises or guarantees that I'd actually learn the language, but just wanted to know more about it. We ordered some books from University of Hawai'i Press... most notably Pukui and Elbert's Hawaiian Pocket Dictionary (their dictionaries are classics and still considered standard), Alberta Pualani Hopkin's Ka Lei Ha'aheo; beginning Hawaiian, and two books of Hawaiian songs/poetry (mele) with both originals and translations.

I studied it with interest almost daily for a few weeks, and then they sat on my bookcase and gathered dust. A year later, I rediscovered them, and the time was apparently right, since the language became another captivating obsession. To me, it's the most beautiful language in the world. The book Ka Lei Ha'aheo also deserves some credit for my enthusiasm for the language.. it's not only a wonderful, interesting and very well done text, but unlike some other very well done Hawaiian texts, it was a near perfect fit for my learning style. I love that book.. I've been meaning to write to the author and thank her..

For the first two months especially, I carried the pocket dictionary everywhere.. I read that little dictionary in the car, before swimming lessons, in waiting rooms, at friends houses, waiting for things to download in front of the computer... I have the big version now, and it is also a wonderful, interesting book, full of examples, and explanations... I've never found another foreign language text that I liked as much as Ka Lei Ha'aheo, or a dictionary that I liked as much as The Hawaiian Dictionary, my fondness for the Hawaiian language itself aside. I exchanged e-mail with a few Hawaiian speakers, I wrote a lot, I read a lot, Turq and I played with it a lot... (bless that brilliant, wonderful boy, he deserves as much credit as anyone else) learning so much in those first few weeks gave me the push I needed to keep going with it. And I just kept up. Of course I also discovered my interest in foreign language learning in general this way, polynesian languages especially, as well as my interest in Hawaiian history, myths, culture and modern issues (especially sovereignty)...

So there you have it. I guess the real reason is just that I read alot..