Spoken Hawaiian [Paperback]

(1) It is laid out in an easy-to-use fashion;
(2) It doesn't start with "what is your name," telling time and the weather.

Honestly, do you go around talking about names, the time and the weather in English? You would sound like Forrest Gump. This is my biggest beef with language texts, and I have no clue how adults can be motivated to learn from such books.

Spoken Hawaiian starts out with a simple, unbelabored intro to pronunciation--which can be pretty scary for a mainland English-only speaker--and goes immediately to a short list of Hawaiian words used in English on the Islands. Even mainlanders may know some of these (like "aloha" and "kahuna") and be comforted.

Then the book gets right into simple sentences and dialogues that at least attempt to have a non-insulting, plausible context to them. (Life is not like a box of chocolates in this grammar book.)

Spoken Hawaiian was written by a pro linguist who also taught the language, and the benefit of this is that grammar is spoon-fed, little by little, in the guise of sentence "patterns" that are then practiced in exercises that expand knowledge gradually. Hawaiian grammar is really different from English, and for presenting it to learners, this is the least confusing book I've seen.

The drawback is that the book is old, from the time when only academics and other dilettantes, and maybe the occasional hula student, really wanted to know Hawaiian. The spelling of certain words is outdated, and the vocabulary is limited. Newer books, like Olelo Oiwi by Hokulani Cleeland, provide newer words and a ton more info on usage, social context, geographic dialect variations, etc.

Olelo Oiwi (which means 'native language') was put out by a group that is working to revive Hawaiian as a native language. Anyone who really wants to get with the program and has a political or social commitment to Hawaii will want to use it. But I find its layout wordy and confusing for newcomers on the mainland, who really want just to know the basics, or want to converse about non-Hawaiian topics. (I am teaching serious hula students/culture learners on the East Coast; both Hawaiian and haole.)

For mainlanders, including ethnic Hawaiians with little contact back home, I would suggest Spoken Hawaiian first, and using Olelo Oiwi as a follow-on and review book. If you're going to be living in Hawaii and/or travelling in Hawaiian cultural circles, though, you're going to want to get into Olelo Oiwi as soon as possible, even if it means learning to count, tell time, and talk about the weather first. The Hawaiian people are serious about getting their language back, and serious students need to follow the current cultural wave.

Pro linguists, too, will probably want to see what Hokulani Cleeland has to say, and it's a rich source of knowledge. But in my opinion, the graphical layout of Olelo Oiwi is heinous. Most of the (vast) info in it is probably better presented conversationally by a standup instructor; and for all I know, that's how it's used in classrooms in Hawaii. Trust me that you need to be devoted to the language, or languages in general, to plow through the notes, or to determine what you are supposed to be doing with the oddly formatted practices and drills in Olelo Oiwi.

Spoken Hawaiian, by contrast, is a breeze to use for high-school age and up. It builds grammar and vocabulary slowly, without troubling the learner's mind with too much detail and variation, and ends with several samples of "real" written Hawaiian, taken from documents from the 1800's. (This book was written before the current resurgence of native speakers.) If you study with Spoken Hawaiian and follow through with it to these documents, I think you'll feel very happy with what you've accomplished; and you'll be well prepared to partake of the more up-to-date sources.