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#40379 09/01/01 02:04 AM
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Japanese is another. Any vowel combination can occur and each takes two morae (beats): kao, ue, nai, ie, au, etc.; and each takes as long as a long vowel, so Oosaka and Tookyoo and Yokohama and Aomori are all four beats.

In Japanese you have to be careful not to make a semi-consonant glide between vowels: pairs like ia and iya can both occur and are quite distinct.

Swahili is like Japanese and the Polynesian languages in that groups like ai, au are disyllables, like any other vowel combination. Presumably then this is widespread in the Bantu family.

Some other languages don't have vowel combinations because they do always use glides. Philippine languages typically only have groups such as uwa, iya, a'a (with glottal stop).

Australian languages are (typically) similar but tend not to have glottal stops: so the two-vowel combination aa is a long vowel but otherwise they have glide-separated groups like awu, uwu, iyi, ayi.


#40381 09/01/01 10:14 AM
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Dipthong? Isn't that a woman's swimming suit even skimpier than a bikini?

How about Hawaiian?


#40383 09/01/01 04:06 PM
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Long post on basic Hawaiian language pronunciation, skip if not interested.General info in later half

Hawaiian has five vowels - a, e, i, o, u, and eight consonants h,k,l,m,n,p,w and '(an okina)

The okina, a glottal stop is a *real consonant sound like all the others. It should be written as leaving it out is like omiting a k or a p or any other letter and the word will be misspelled. In English this sound occurs as a break between the two "O"s as in "Oh-Oh, here comes the boss!"
All vowels have a long and short form. The sound does not change; only the length is different. The length mark, which goes above the vowel aeiou is callled a kahako (long o) or a mekona (macron.) Sorry I do not have the capability to make the macron over the aeiou cited.
It should be enunciated or written whenever it occurs because omitting it changes the pronunciation and often the meaning of the word.
Two other sounds occur in Hawaiian that do not change the meaning of the word. These sounds ae the "w" and the "y" glides that are automaticcally produced between certain vowel combinations.
Hawaiian has only two kinds of syllables V (Vowel) or CV (consonant+vowel) and combinations of these two syllables.
Hawaiian words never have two consonants together and they never end with a consonant.
The ' okina is a consonant so it can never go next to another consonant or at the end of a word.
With words of fewer than four syllables, the stress is on the second to last (penultimate) syllable.

I could go on and on .... the above is from "Ka Lei Ha'aheo" (beginning Hawaiian) by Alberta Pualani Hopkins. Pub. University of Hawai'i Press Copyright 1992
A teacher's Guide and Answer Key to the "Ka Lei Ha'aheo" is part of the "set" by same publisher.
For further information about pronunciation see Pukui and Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary" (1986, pp xvii-xviii and Sylvia Kamana The Hawaiian Language, Its Spelling and Pronunciation."
General info
My Hawaiian friends noted that in spoken Hawaiian every syllable is pronounced.
Further the Hawaiian friends -- mostly native speakers (Hawaiian as a first language)-- tell me that the Boston accent "... is the kindest to the Hawaiian language."
This may be attributed to the fact that the Hawaiian language was first written down by American missionary folk ... all of the early one came from the Boston area and so heard the spoken language with a "Boston ear!"
At least that is the theory.
Before the missionary contingent wrote down the Hawaiian language there was no written language.
Once the language was written the King said everyone should learn to write the language and, according to scholars, the entire population was 95 percent literate in the written language within a year.
Note : The real okina ' looks like the single quote when properly written. My computer does not have it but when I wrote for the Hawaiian newspaper "Ka Wai Ola O OHA" (The living Waters of OHA) the computer had the proper okina available. However the macron we had to put in, very carefully - with an extra sharp felt tip pen - in galleys before the pages went to the printer. (a tricky manuever!) I understand that since my time at the Office of Hawaiian Affairs the macron has been made part of the program.

So, the name of the Hawaiian Island on which Honolulu is located (O'ahu) is properly pronounced O-ah-hoo and, please, note that Honolulu is Honolulu not the usually heard Hon-uh-lulu. Thank you.


#40384 09/01/01 09:13 PM
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re meaning of Honolulu ---
Pukui Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary ( the accepted authority) notes that Hono with big H means:
" nvi -Bay, gulch, valley (as part of a place name as in Honolulu)"
The word hono, small h, means
1."to stitch, sew, mend, patch, a joining as of mountains
2. n.- back of the neck, brow of a cliff.
3. n. Rite at the end of kapu loulu rituals during which chiefs sat without shifting positions while a kahuna prayed for as long as an hour.
lulu : "calm, peace, shelter,lee, protection, shield, shelter, cloak, to lie at anchor; to be calm, to shield
honolulu with small h is: to lie quietly in calm waters, as a ship in port; to be calm , to gather together,. etc"

In Hawai'i Honolulu is generally accepted among Native Hawaiians to mean (loosely translated into English) :
"The Gathering Place."


#40386 09/01/01 10:16 PM
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#40387 09/02/01 04:22 PM
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So are you guys implying that Maaori and Hawaiian are basically the same language just spelled slightly differently? Or are they just very similar, like Dutch and German? Can it be assumed that "native" Hawaiians came from the New Zealand neighborhood?

And what exactly is this macron you're talking about? I know you talked about it before, but I fell asleep in class.


#40388 09/02/01 04:39 PM
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Trustees from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) made a trip to visit Maori and discovered they can understand each other pretty well when each speaking their own language.
There is evidence that some early Hawaiians came from "The Land of the Long Cloud" (NZ) Imagine! Over that distance, in outrigger canoes with just stars and tides as a guide!
The macron is a short line over a letter to elongate the sound. That's why Max Q uses Maaori - because we have no macron and seeing Maori doesn't lend itself to the long a pronunciation which a macron would make clear. Oh, dear! Am I being clear? (muddled thinking-e) Macron and okina explained, in depth, in earlier post. (huge west-of-Ireland sigh)


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James Mitchner's book "Hawaii" is a good read and the opening tells of how the islands were formed by volcano eruptions from the ocean floor.
Another book, much regarded in Hawaii is Gavan Dawes book "Shoal of Time" sub titled "A History of the Hawaiian Islands". which begins with Captain Cook's "discovery" (ahem*) of the islands. Published by The University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1968, still in print.
ISBN is 0-8248-0324-8. The paperback published by arrangement with The MacMillan Company.



#40390 09/02/01 07:17 PM
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#40391 09/02/01 07:29 PM
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#40392 09/03/01 01:02 AM
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Alert : Might not be the post for those with no interest in Hawaiians and Maori

As an interesting aside, the Northern Cook Islands are almost exactly equidistant from Hawaii and Aotearoa.

Ahhh, now that interest me. Perhaps they went there first and from there to Hawaii? I spent some time browsing through my Hawaiiana but didn't find anything off hand ...but a mid-point voyage then to Hawaii seems logical ??
Food for thought.
Max : To save others from further maundering by me on this subject, I will Email you with anything I run across ... after I pay the bills, straighten the house after the long weekend, get to the bank, shop for groceries ... You get the idea (also known as : don't hold your breath.)

P.S. Geoff : you did ask...

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Nicholas informs us that ...Oosaka and Tookyoo and Yokohama and Aomori are all four beats.

While the 'o' sounds may be long in Osaka and Tokyo, I would be hesitant to pronounce them as two separate letters as appears to be suggested. Tokyo is written in hiragana (the basic Japanese script) as to-o-kyo-o, but the individual 'o' adds length rather than a new sound. It should possibly take as long to pronounce as the others, but I query its 4-syllable pronounciation.

(I'm hoping I've interpreted the original post correctly and may well have no idea what I'm talking about. /disclaimer-e)


#40394 09/03/01 01:36 AM
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My understanding was that both early New Zealanders and early Hawaiians are descendant from a common ancestor (or group more likely). Archaeological evidence suggests that the Pacific Islands (such as the Cook Islands) were colonised well before both NZ and Hawaii.


#40395 09/03/01 01:55 AM
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#40396 09/03/01 06:02 AM
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Wow, as one who has always appreciated your posts, may I hope that you and Max will keep this correspondence going on the public boards because I for one am finding it very interesting.

Max, I forget the details of Thor Heyerdahl's work (it was getting on for thirty years ago I read Kon Tiki (aka Kong tilde to Aenigma at least) but I thought his thesis was precisely that Easter Island had been settled by the island peoples crossing the Pacific before the Europeans reached it and that they were the ones who had raised the statues. What are you objecting to in that?

Bingley


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#40397 09/03/01 06:49 AM
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#40398 09/03/01 08:29 AM
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While the 'o' sounds may be long in Osaka and Tokyo, I would be hesitant to pronounce them as two separate letters as appears to be suggested

No, I wasn't suggesting that: to clarify, Tookyoo is two syllables, Oosaka is three, and Aomori and Yokohama are four; but in Japanese the mora or beat is more important than the syllable. The first of a double consonant is also a beat: so Ni-p-po-n is four beats, same as Yokohama. (And it's three syllables because the final -n is a separately pronuncible syllable.)


#40399 09/03/01 08:48 AM
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The dispersal of the Polynesians is archaeologically fairly recent. One suggested starting point is Solomon Islands or northern New Guinea. Carbon dating shows the pattern of setlement of the islands - I have no details of dates or order to hand, but it was into the central Pacific first, and outlying lands like Aotearoa, Hawaii, and Tahiti later.

All Polynesian languages are very similar (note Fijian is linguistically Melanesian, not Polynesian). By applying the consonant shifts you can almost read them off as each other, it seems: certainly they have many many common words and grammatical constructions in common.

Some (like Maori, Hawaiian) have W and others (like Samoan, Tahitian) have V: wahine ~ vahine 'woman'. The Hawaiian W is actually more V-like before some vowels.

Some have H, others have S. The main island of Samoa is Savai'i, which is obviously the same name as Hawai'i and Hawaiki. Presumably S is the older form but I won't swear to it.

The original K of proto-Polynesian changed into the 'okina. Maori preserves the original three consonants K T P.

However this is complicated by the fact that in some languages T has changed to K. So Hawaiian now has K and ' but no T. This is true in normal Samoan speech too, though T is still used in writing. Samoa's head of state Malietoa Tanumafili is pronounced Maliekoa Kanumafili except in formal settings... according to my Teach Yourself Samoan. This indicates that the change happpened before Hawaiian was set down in writing, but after Samoan was.

The Polynesian family is part of a larger group called Austronesian (formerly called Malayo-Polynesian). This includes all the languages of Indonesia, the Philippines, Micronesia, and Melanesia (but not New Guinea) as well; and also Malagasy of Madagascar; and also the aboriginal (non-Chinese) languages of Taiwan.

Archaeological evidence is matched by linguistic evidence (common words for kinds of canoe, animal etc.) for the original homeland of Austronesian speakers as being in Taiwan. From there their spread down into the Philippines, into Indonesia, and across the Pacific (and in the case of Malagasy across the Indian Ocean) can be dated with somewhat more accuracy than old language movements usually can.


#40400 09/03/01 09:06 AM
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I have remembered Hungarian also doesn't have diphthongs. The country names Ausztria and Francia, for example, have each of their vowels separate, as does the language name franciául 'French'.

--

I don't know ethnology. The island of Rotuma in the Fiji Islands has a Polynesian language.

#40402 09/03/01 04:26 PM
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Wow, and Max, I second bingley, this is a wonderful thread.. it is just what i like about language.. (it expands my breathe of knowledge, with out requiring me to really learn either Maaori or Hawaiian!)

I am not intereted in learn sanskit either, but love learning words, (like word!) that seem to go back eons, unchanged in meaning!

it is interesting how language and learning about it, helps us construct history.


#40403 09/05/01 04:32 AM
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Here's some more information about the Austronesian family with examples of some reconstructed word forms.

http://www.indonesianheritage.com/Encyclopedia/Ancient_History/
Prehistory/Austronesian_Languages/austronesian_languages.html


In the table near the bottom of the page, they give the forms in reconstructed Pan-austronesian, Rukai, Javanese, and Fijian. Max and wow, can we add Maaori and Hawaiian?

PS. Sorry about the superwide post. If someone PMs me how to fix it, I'll gladly do so.

Is that better? (Thanks wow)
Bingley


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#40404 09/05/01 06:51 AM
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#40405 09/05/01 11:11 AM
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huka

ah - a hobson-jobson phrase!


#40406 09/05/01 01:10 PM
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huka

Or -- it's the way sugar sounds to a Polynesian ear!
In Hawaii, many of the "new" words
brought to the Islands by Westerners
were simply adopted and adapted by the Hawaiians.

As, for example - nupepa (long u) is newspaper in Hawaiian.
and car = ka'a
Kalikimaka - Christmas
New Orleans - Nu 'Olina
(skipping to the M page -)
Micronesian - Maikonekia
Messiah - Mekia
Mexico - Mekiko with long i. --
(sounds much like I heard Mexicans
in Mexico pronounce Mexico!)



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Anyone know Latin? When I have sung songs in Latin in choirs, I seem to remember being admonished by the director(s) to remember that Latin has pure vowels, not dipthongs like English.


#40408 09/06/01 02:14 AM
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Latin does have diphthongs. Right off the top of my head:
ae as in caetera, Caesar
au as in haud
oe as in coelum
ua as in suaviter, ue as in Suetonious, but the 'u' is more like 'w', and partakes of the nature of a consonant
ua, ue, ui, uo as in any word after 'q', but this maybe a special case
ia, ie, io, iu but another special case, as the 'i' = 'j' and is more a consonant than a vowel.





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#40410 09/06/01 05:07 AM
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And the Indonesian equivalents:

two - rua -- dua
four - wha -- empat
five - rima -- lima
six - ono -- enam
eye - mata, kanohi -- mata
ear - taringa -- telinga
road - huarahi -- jalan
stone - poohatu,koohatu or whatu -- batu
canoe - waka -- prahu
headlice -kutu -- kutu



Bingley


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#40411 09/06/01 09:43 AM
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that Latin has pure vowels, not dipthongs like English

What this meant is that the long E and O are pure vowels [e:] and [o:], not diphthongs [ei] and [ou] as they are in English.


#40412 09/06/01 08:54 PM
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headlice -kutu -- kutu

My brother is in the room with me and when I said this word out loud he thought I mean cooties. Could they possibly be related?


#40413 09/07/01 02:34 AM
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Thank you MaxQ and Bingley for the Maaori
and the Indonesian equivalents.
I am adding another equivalent, (in blue). It is from the main dialect spoken in the mid-southern group of Philippine islands called the Visayas. I was born in one of these islands so it is my mother tongue.

two ---rua -- dua--duha
four - wha -- empat--apat
five - rima -- lima--lima
six - ono -- enam----anum
eye - mata, kanohi -- mata----mata
ear - taringa -- telinga----talinga
road - huarahi -- jalan----dalan
stone - poohatu,koohatu or whatu ----batu----batu
canoe - waka -- prahu----paraw
headlice -kutu -- kutu----kutu
pandanus-------------------pandan
sugarcane------------------tubo

Thank you, Bingley, for the website on Austronesian languages, among others.



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Sorry, Jazzo, what are cooties?

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#40415 09/07/01 05:10 AM
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Indonesian:
pandanus pandan
sugarcane tebu

Bingley


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#40416 09/07/01 12:59 PM
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cooties are american slang for head lice. there is(or was?) even a kids game called cooties.. as you went around the board, you "earned" or "lost" body parts. the winner of the game was the first to amass and assemble a red plastic cootie bug..

the ultimate slur in 2nd grade is "You have cootie bugs".


#40417 09/07/01 07:37 PM
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>cooties. Could they possibly be related?

My dictionary says perhaps.



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#40418 09/10/01 11:43 AM
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there is(or was?) even a kids game called cooties.. as you went around the board, you "earned" or "lost" body parts. the winner of the game was the first to amass and assemble a red plastic cootie bug..
In UK there used to be "Beetle Drives" where one assembled (or more often drew) bettles from parts assigned by throwing a die. If I remember correctly, 6 for the body to start so you could stick the rest on, 1 for a leg etc. First to finish won and moved on round the various tables. Popular in parish functions and the like for a while. I think we may still have a set of the plastic beetle home version somewhere!



#40419 09/30/01 07:57 AM
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One of my birthday presents to myself was a new dictionary, "A Learner's Dictionary of Today's Indonesian", which doesn't just give meanings of words but is full of other little titbits as well.

Max, without looking it up, what would you guess the meaning of Indonesian benua to be? The dictionary mentions it as an old Austronesian word and gives the Maaori equivalent.

And for wordcrazy, the dictionary also mentions that Indonesian tulisan, handwriting or something written, is from the same root as the Tagalog tulisan, which apparently means bandit. The ancestral tulis means sharp-pointed, and the two languages settled for different things to do with sharp-pointed objects: one went for the pen, the other for the sword.

Bingley


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I remember going to a lecture at Otago University several moons ago where the pre-European colonisation of New Zealand was discussed seminar-style by some experts, the names of whom meant nothing to me, this not really being my field.

The theory in vogue at that time, and this may have changed in the 10-15 years since, was that there were two major waves of Polynesian migration to New Zealand, one about 1000-1200 AD and another one later, perhaps c1600. The first wave of migration may have been quite accidental and sparse - canoes being blown off course from time to time. Certainly, at that time there was a fair amount of support for the idea that the Chatham Islands (200 miles of the coast of the South Island) were settled during the first wave. The common word for these people was Maoriori or Moriori. At the time there was little archaeological evidence of their lifestyle, although I understand that they've been busy on this one. Of course, no one knows what their language was, although it was being assumed at the time that it was a variant of whatever form of "Polynesian" was being spoken.

The second wave of migration - the "canoe period" (and Max may be able to give you better info about that) brought a much larger and better organised wave of immigration. There was some debate over whether it was deliberate policy by the rulers of ?the Cook Islands? to relieve overpopulation and minimise warfare. Whatever, it was believed that the canoes (five, Max?) all came from the same place. The language they brought with them became what we now know as Maori - sorry Max, no double letters and no macron. The lack of real linguistic drift apparently supports the thesis that the immigration was quite recent.

Back to the seminar, and here's where there was a lot of controversy which I think still rages in anthropological circles. The newcomers ran headlong into the established land ownership/territorial boundaries instituted by the original migrants. The languages may have been dissimilar enough so that negotiation would have been difficult or maybe nobody really bothered. Although early European historians would have it that the Maori killed and ate the Moriori, it was believed that it was much more likely that there was a gradual assimilation, except in the Chathams. There, it appears that the original inhabitants were left pretty much to their own devices until the mid-18th/early 19th century when a bunch of Tainui invaded. I don't know the details of this.

If the Moriori were not pure Polynesian, a lot would be explained by assimilation in terms of the physiological differences between the Maori and other Polynesians - not great, but noticeable. My opinion here!

I remember one linguistically-inclined lady holding forth at some length in support of the recency of the main migration. She maintained that the linguistic drift in Maori from the original Cook Island Polynesian language would have been much greater if more than a few hundred years had elapsed since the migration.

Since I don't speak either language, I can only report, so FWIW.



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#40421 09/30/01 08:56 PM
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#40422 10/01/01 04:20 AM
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Much easier than Hogwash, wasn't it? whenua is the word the dictionary gives as a Maaori cognate of benua, which means continent, as in Benua Afrika, Benua Asia, etc.

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#40424 10/01/01 04:29 PM
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It's interesting, I think, that the Maori refer to themselves as natives, when their ancestors came by boat, just as the Pakeha did. Similarly with our "Native Americans".


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guess it boils down to a question of exactly whenuarrived


#40426 10/01/01 04:43 PM
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Or maybe the only part of the world that has true natives is the Tigris-Euphrates region? How old does a race have to be, before it can be considered "native"?


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Browsing my recently received brochure from the University of Hawai'i Press and found a book that may interest some folks here,
"Oceanic Linguistics" - Byron W. Bender, editor.
the book is "... dedicated exclusively to the study of of indigenous languages of the Oceanic area and parts of southeast Asia." $40 for individuals. ISBN 0029-8115
Postage: $5 first book, $1 each book thereafter for USA
Outside USA $7 for first book and $3 each after 1st book.
Payment in US dollars.
For a brochure, call toll free 1-888-UHPRESS (847-7377)


For Asia and the Pacific including Australia and New Zealand the contact is:
East-West Export Books
c/o University of Hawai'i Press
2840Kolowalu Street
Honolulu, Hawai'i 968-22-1888
The above UH name, street and ZIp are regular address

telephone 808 956-8830
fax 808-988-6025
email : eweb@hawaii.edu

Europe, Africa, Middle East, South Asia
Email : publish@curzonpress.co.uk

Western Canada Email : marzbooks@home.com



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I am having great fun transliterating from Hawaiian to Maaori, and seeing what I come up with.

Well, a luau rather than a hangi, for starters. Oh, and the main course as well ...



The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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