Customer Reviews

Instant Immersion Hawaiian

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I found 4 great tools for learning Hawaiian, at Amazon. Your success in learning will depend on using them in the right order. They're all great in their own ways.

Beginner level
1. "Learn Hawaiian at Home", by Kahikahealani Wight
If you're new to the language, this book will walk you patiently through all the basics. Slow? Yes. But it was just what I needed. There are two cassette tapes included, with all the vocabulary, dialogs, reading material and even songs! I found the package reasonably priced.

Beginner to intermediate
2. "Ka Lei Ha'aheao--Beginning Hawaiian", by Alberta Pualani Hopkins
For continuing what you learned in "Learn Hawaiian at Home", this is an excellent book. It will take you all the way through all the Hawaiian grammar, and there are lots and lots of dialogs, giving variations on what you learn.
The downside? Cassette tapes are available, and I know my progress would be much faster if I had the big bucks to buy them. I don't.

Intermediate to advanced
3. Instant Immersion CD
Good points: Very natural-sounding Hawaiian, and lots of it
Downside: If you're a beginner, this will knock the wind out of your sails. The lessons have reading passages, some with very difficult grammar.
No printed matter comes with the CDs. You have to download it from the internet.
Some vocabulary from the lessons are NOT explained. You'll need a big Pukui-Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary to find out the meanings. Not exactly user-friendly!
Still, if you love hearing the lilt of Hawaiian spoken as much as I do, you may opt to get this.


Intermediate to advanced
4. "Let's Speak Hawaiian" by Dorothy M. Kahananui & Alberta P. Anthony
Too difficult for beginners, as it was for me! Explanations are minimal. An exorbitantly-priced tape set is available, but I couldn't afford it.
I was always frustrated with myself for not being able to understand this book. However, after doing a fair amount of learning through the first two books given above, I found that "Let's Speak Hawaiian" is a wonderful extension to what I know. Get this one last!

I've been reading quite a few discussions on AlohaWorld.com as well as soc.culture.hawaii about these CD's. Although I'm home in Hawai'i now, I lived on the mainland for quite awhile (CA & OR) and shared the frustration of many ex-pats on the lack of access to Hawaiian language materials, particularly recordings. These CD's provide excellently modeled spoken Hawaiian by Kaliko Beamer-Trapp and Kiele Akana-Gooch.

The CD's cover the basics quite well, as well as give lots of opportunities to hear stories in Hawaiian.

I would have given the program 5 stars but for the lack of written materials to accompany the CD's (although some of the material is available on the website).

Overall, I'm glad to see a quality product available to help those on the mainland (and here in Hawai'i) attain spoken fluency (I know we all have vast vocabularies and can read Hawaiian - now we can speak it and understand it as well).

These CD's are just what they say: instant immersion. Written materials would help the very beginner; since I already know some Hawaiian, they aren't really necessary but would be nice. I enjoyed writing the vocab out and that helped to reinforce the teaching.

I concur with one of the other reviewers: the gentleman who speaks Hawaiian on the CD has a genuine "old style" accent (my kumu was a native speaker as well) while the woman speaker seems to have been trained in "university Hawaiian," which can be a bit jarring to the ear. But, it is good to have a male and female voice speaking the words and people do have different accents by island, age and training. So it's not all bad but if you want to know how native Hawaiian speakers use the language, the male narrator is wonderful. His English is beautiful, too!

I definitely recommend this. Novices should also buy plenty of Hawaiian-language music to help develop an "ear," too.

This set of CDs is professionally developed and suitable for people who are committed to learning the language. It presents a broad range of vocabulary and the structure of the spoken Hawaiian and the translations is clear and easy to follow. What this course lacks is a written translation of what is in the CDs. People who have different learning styles therefore miss out on this extra support. Also missing are basic conversational structures that would allow the listeners to understand spoken Hawaiian "in the street" and begin to converse themselves.

I use this in the car. I loop through a track until I get it. The online material (they give the URL on the box) was really helpful.

I skipped the beginning story because it was way beyond my ability. After finishing all the lessons, then go back and try to understand the story...but get the online written version to follow along with.

Upside: Excellent accent. Lots of material.

Small downsides: sometimes too long or too short of a time to repeat. Have to skip the first 3 tracks until you have learned all the material.

All in all this is the absolute best of all the tapes and books I've used. I really, really recommend it.

The fellow who is teaching is not a native speaker & mispronounces words. The printed material referred to on the DVD is a BIG help. I've found at least 1 error on the recording where they repeat 1 of the letter sounds in the alphabet. I've tried the program offered thru Univ of HI at Hilo (some lessons avail on Itues), but some of the printed material is no longer available.

I ordered this CD set because I wanted a good, basic spoken Hawaiian intro. What I got was a little more challenging than what I expected. I am a relatively fluent in Spanish (a learned language, not my native tongue), and I can fake it when I'm traveling to other Romance-language countries (France, Italy), so I thought I could get the basics of another language down quickly via audio lessons. I had to listen to CD 1 and CD 2 about five times before I understood the lessons. This could be due to the fact that the CDs don't really provide grammar basics (or it could be my aging brain has lost some ability to memorize quickly). Regardless, the narrators were clear and their Hawaiian pronunciation seems authentic, so I am learning from the CDs during my driving commute. I have moved on to the next few CD's, and I have since found a book of grammar basics and a dictionary which I'll review in order to round out my language learning. For the price of the set, I still think it was a worthwhile purchase.

I actually like this CD series but it is VERY intense and I don't like that each CD has nothing to do with the prior CD and they are not related or review or even apply what you previously learned. Additionally after the 1st CD each one goes into a story, in Hawaiian, which I don't understand and they never translate.

It's great, I listen to it every chance I get, the hard part is no one on my block to speak with. :)
I've learn to say a lot of stuff and know one knows what am saying. cool!!!!!

cheers!

I have almost all of the Hawaiian language courses you can get, some are excellent programs but very basic, some aren't worth having at all. This one is somewhere between.

This is only the first CD in the series (Which I have the full series) and this first CD is extremely basic, but a perfect foundation if you know nothing. If have any experience with Hawaiian, don't get this CD, go ahead and buy the full series; it is the best and most comprehensive I have found. If you just want to understand how Hawaiian sounds and the basic rules or beginning phrases, this might get you ready for your first visit to the islands. Personally I don't think they should sell the first CD on it's own, but it might be just what some folks need. This will get you Aloha and Mahalo, but pretty much nothing more.