Customer Reviews

Ka Lei Ha'aheo: Beginning Hawaiian

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4 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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!

Hawaiian is not a language that someone who has no experience with can simply pick up: the nuances and pronunciations alone are enough to scare off the uninitiated and the differences between Hawaiian and Western (and Eastern for that matter) cultures create difficulties that are not easily overcome by obstinate minds. Mrs. Hopkins' book was intended primarily as a textbook to be used as the text for a Hawaiian class and in a classroom environment. Having grown up in Hawaii, the pronunciations were not difficult for me and the exercises were both useful and amusing. While the grammar section in the back is by no mean comprehensive, it should be remembered that this was not meant to be a dictionary.

This is an excellent text for someone who has access to a native speaker with whom he or she can practice with and the standard by which Hawaiian textbooks should be measured.

If you don't agree with me, you are welcome to challenge my opinion in a duel--smallswords or epees--and seek a gentleman's satisfaction.

If you thought lanugage-learning was boring, think again! Ka Lei Ha'aheo is a horse of a different color. No more memorization of useless phrases like "the pen of my aunt is on the table." No more obtuse grammar lessons. Full of concise explanations of grammar, carefully selected useful vocabulary, all cemented into place with interesting dialogs and stories, "Ka Lei Ha'aheo" makes language learning a breeze.

Better still, "Ka Lei Ha'aheo" gives the student a taste of Hawaiian history and culture, and an insight into how the language might influence its speakers to view the world differently from English speakers.

Having studied seven other languages using dozens of text books, Ka Lei Ha'aheo is by far the best language text-book I have ever used.

Mahalo nui i ka mea ka:kau.

Seth Watkins

This is an excellent book to learn Hawaiian from. I have seen other books published by the University of Hawaii and I think this is a step above for the beginner. I own Spoken Hawaiian and have seen Let's Speak Hawaiian E Kama'ilio Hawai'I Kakou and both are not suited for the beginner with no knowledge of Hawaiian. Beginning Hawaiian has one big advantage over the other two, it gives the vocabulary for each lesson in each lesson. In other words the text is set-up like you standard language textbook: dialogs/readings, grammar, and vocabulary in each lesson. The only shame is the high price of the audio that goes with the text. But there are alternatives, such as Learn Hawaiian at Home which is a excellent text (with audio!) to begin with and then use this text afterward.

I gave it a 4 because it will be very useful when I go through the exercises in the Ka Lei Ha'aheo: Beginning Hawaiian book-but I haven't had the chance to really use it yet.

Okay, let me preface this review by saying I'm a haole boy, came here when I was 7 (I old man now.). I took 'olelo at UH Manoa for two and half semesters because I had to take a language to graduate and Japanese looked too hard. I coulda taken spanish but why? If you call someplace home you gotta do more than take up space, right?. My scrawny tattooed white butt wasn't about to go hoe wa'a or hula. I gotta mouth on me so I figure what better to do. I learned 'olelo. This was the book that taught me. My kumu were fantastic and long after I grad I kept my copy of Ka Lei Ha'aheo(along with my Pukui and Elbert dictionary), all held together with duct tape, and used it all the time. I don't hang around the 'olelo community; I like but I just don't. My wife and kids are Hawaiian but they no speak. And I no speak either. I know some Hawaiian now. Das it. But what I do know is from this book and my kumu. I have a distinct UH Manoa dialect for sure, all western academic kine taught, no old school Ni'ihau 'olelo from me. But at least I know some stuffs. I gave my copy to to a good frind of mine, a strong and beautiful Hawaiian lady I worked with who came to me of all people asking for help with translating stuffs. I felt ridiculous. Sad though, she never learn when she was a keiki. So even though I use 'em all the time to help me out when I'm trying say something to my kids, I figured she need 'em more than me.
Point being, I gotta pick up a new copy because until I have time to find and cruise with kekahi hui 'olelo on Maui to keep my skills up, I need this book. No think you going buy this book and all of a sudden become "fluent". There's way the heck more to it than that. WAY more. You better off finding one kupuna if can, listening, then going home studying this book.

This book contains some good information for beginners, but my copy was written on and in. It was still a good purchase.

This book requires a workbook that is unavailable. It is not a good tool for learning Hawai'ian without a teacher.

I bought this book to learn the Hawaiian language on my own. This book was written for people who have access to someone who speaks the Hawaiian language. In the first chapter, it just brushes over pronunciation. The book then then gives an excercise in the end of the that chapter to review street names with someone who speaks the language. I was extremely disappointed with the grammatics and vocabulary offered and the excercises in the end of each chapter were too advanced. It seemed that the information provided in each chapter was not adequate to perform the excerises in the end of the chapters.