First, make sure the Hawaiian keyboard is selected on your computer. Typing Hawaiian is easy thanks to the early efforts of Keola Donaghy with Apple and Microsoft. And yes, it is perfectly acceptible to use an okina in close proximity to an apostrophe, as in: Hawaii’s. The five vowels with macrons – Ā ā, Ē ē, Ī ī, Ō ō, Ū ū – are not treated as separate letters, but are alphabetized immediately after unaccented vowels. An ‘okina is like a number six whose top slants to the right. Alphabetic order differs from the normal Latin order in that the vowels come first, then the consonants. The current official Hawaiian alphabet consists of 13 letters: five vowels (A a, E e, I i, O o, and U u) and eight consonants (H h, K k, L l, M m, N n, P p, W w, and ʻ). The macron, or kahakō, was used to differentiate between short and long vowels. Kahakō Īs early as 1821, one of the missionaries, Hiram Bingham, was using macrons in making handwritten transcriptions of Hawaiian vowels. It was not until 1864 that the ʻokina became a recognized letter of the Hawaiian alphabet. In publishing the Hawaiian Bible, they used the ʻokina to distinguish koʻu ('my') from kou ('your'). As early as 1823, the missionaries made limited use of the apostrophe to represent the glottal stop, but they did not make it a letter of the alphabet. V was dropped, W was keptĭue to words with different meanings being spelled alike, use of the glottal stop became necessary. In 1826, the developers voted to eliminate some of the letters which represented functionally redundant interchangeable letters, enabling the Hawaiian alphabet to approach the ideal state of one-symbol-one-sound, and thereby optimizing the ease with which people could teach and learn the reading and writing of Hawaiian. In addition, the letters F, G, S, Y, and Z were used to spell foreign words. The original alphabet included five vowels and seven consonants: In 1822, a writing system based on one similar to the new New Zealand Grammar was developed and printed by American Protestant missionary Elisha Loomis. In his report, he wrote the name of the islands as "Owhyhee" or "Owhyee". Mahalo again to Apple for their support of ka ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i.In 1778, British explorer James Cook made the first reported European voyage to Hawaiʻi. Hopefully this kind of situation can be addressed in future updates, but it’s still a huge improvement. If you spell ‘ōlelo as olelo, it will not suggest ‘okina as a potential correct spelling. One kind of typo it does not seem to catch is if you fail to type a word-initial ‘okina, and quite often inside the word as well. In the example shown on this graphic, the “g” that is mistakenly typed is next to the letter “h” on the keyboard, so it works well. The spell-check and suggestions are based largely on the letters that surround the intended vowel. The final new feature is that there is now spell-checking for Hawaiian, based on an extensive word list that we provided to Apple. Also note that the return key has “Kāho‘i” on it. I’m sure those that use the soft keyboard exclusively and want to type in Hawaiian will love it. This is cool as this is how you would spell out the vowel combination ‘ā-kō, ‘ē-kō, ī-kō, etc. If you type a vowel and then press this key, it will insert the kahakō over that vowel. Now, there is also a stand-alone kahakō on the right side, next to the ‘okina. While you can still long-hold the vowels and select the vowel-‘okina from the list that pops up.
#How totype hawaiian okina mac os x#
Now, if you select the Hawaiian keyboard in the iOS general preferences, you type the ‘okina and kahakō in the same way that you type them on Mac OS X – by simply typing the apostrophe for the ʻokina, and holding down the option key while you type the kahakō.Īnother feature on the new soft keyboard (the one that displays itself on the screen), is that there is a new way to type the ʻokina. Previously, there was no way to type the ‘okina or kahakō easily using an external keyboard. Why is this significant, since you could previously generate the ‘okina and kahakō? First, it is a boon for iPad owners who like to use external keyboards.
There is now a Hawaiian keyboard in the OS. iOS 5 takes this support to a while new level. With version 3, iOS has been able to generate the ʻokina and kahakō by pressing and holding the vowels and selecting those characters from a list of vowel and diacritic combinations that pops up.
#How totype hawaiian okina software#
Since it shares some core software with OS X, and OS X has supported Hawaiian since 2002, iOS has had the ability to display the ‘okina and kahakō since it first shipped, and we were delighted when some of our translated strings showed up in that first version as well.
There has always been some support for Hawaiian language in iOS. Last week Apple released iOS 5, the latest version of their operating system for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.