| Niʻihau Dialect | |
| Familycolor: | Austronesian |
| Nativename: | Olelo Matuahine |
| Fam2: | Malayo-Polynesian |
| Fam3: | Oceanic |
| Fam4: | Polynesian |
| Fam5: | Eastern Polynesian |
| Fam6: | Marquesic |
| Fam7: | Hawaiian |
| Ethnicity: | Hawaiians |
| Region: | Niʻihau, Kauaʻi |
| Speakers: | 500 |
| Date: | 1995 |
| States: | Hawaiʻi |
| Script: | Latin |
| Isoexception: | dialect |
| Map: | Spoken extent of Niihau dialect.png |
| Mapcaption: | The dialect is native to Niʻihau (dark red) and a significant Niʻihau diaspora lives on Kauaʻi (light red). |
Niʻihau dialect (Hawaiian: ʻŌlelo Niʻihau|label=Standard Hawaiian, Hawaiian: Olelo Matuahine|label=Niʻihau|lit=mother tongue) is a dialect of the Hawaiian language spoken on the island of Niʻihau, more specifically in its only settlement Puʻuwai, and on the island of Kauaʻi, specifically near Kekaha, where descendants of families from Niʻihau now live. Today, the Niʻihau dialect is taught in Ke Kula Niihau O Kekaha.
The Hawaiian language and its dialects (including Niʻihau) are a part of the Austronesian languages, which are a group of languages spoken throughout Oceania, Southeast Asia and other parts of the world.[1] It specifically belongs to the Polynesian subbranch, which also includes languages such as Samoan, Tongan, Tahitian and Marquesan.[2]
Today, the families with ancestry in Niʻihau who now live on western Kauaʻi use the same dialect as that spoken on Niʻihau, but some speakers refer to the speakers of the dialect outside of Niʻihau as speakers of Olelo Kauaʻi.
| Nasal | pronounced as /m/ | pronounced as /n/ | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | pronounced as /p/ | pronounced as /t ~ k/ | pronounced as /ʔ/ | ||
| Fricative | pronounced as /h/ | ||||
| Sonorant | pronounced as /w ~ v/ | pronounced as /l ~ ɾ/ | |||
Unlike the Hawaiian taught in schools, the Niʻihau dialect maintains the variation between pronounced as /[r]/ and pronounced as /[l]/, in addition to pronounced as /[t]/ and pronounced as /[k]/. Some other pockets of speakers on Molokai and Maui have also been found to maintain the pronounced as /[t]/ variant. While in the 1950s the Niʻihau dialect had free variation between pronounced as /[t]/ and pronounced as /[k]/, recent observations suggest that pronounced as /[t]/ and pronounced as /[k]/ are currently found in largely complementary distribution in the modern Niʻihau dialect. The pronounced as /[k]/ allophone appears when before other syllables containing the pronounced as /[t]/ allophone: thus Niʻihau has Hawaiian: ketahi 'one', Hawaiian: kātou 'we (inclusive)', Hawaiian: makahiti 'year', where standard Hawaiian has Hawaiian: kekahi, Hawaiian: kākou, and Hawaiian: makahiki.
This pattern of dissimilation is also extended to some loanwords. For example, the English word 'cook' is reflected in Niʻihau Hawaiian as Hawaiian: kute, even though the word 'cook' does not have a pronounced as /[t]/ in English.
The pronounced as /[k]/ allophone, represented in standard Hawaiian and the Hawaiian alphabet, is prestigious and associated with reading styles. The Bible in particular is always read with pronounced as /[k]/. The dissimilation pattern in colloquial Niʻihau may be due to an effort to preserve the Niʻihau dialect's distinctiveness from standard Hawaiian.
Like the Hawaiian taught in universities, ʻŌlelo Niʻihau has five short and five long vowels, plus diphthongs.
| Short | Long | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front | Back | Front | Back | ||
| Close | pronounced as /i/ | pronounced as /u/ | pronounced as /iː/ | pronounced as /uː/ | |
| Mid | pronounced as /ɛ ~ e/ | pronounced as /o/ | pronounced as /eː/ | pronounced as /oː/ | |
| Open | pronounced as /a ~ ɐ ~ ə/ | pronounced as /aː/ | |||
Niʻihau retains the five pure vowels characteristic of Hawaiian with few changes. The short vowels are pronounced as //u, i, o, e, a//, and the long vowels, if they are considered separate phonemes rather than simply sequences of like vowels, are pronounced as //uː, iː, oː, eː, aː//. When stressed, short pronounced as //e// and pronounced as //a// have been described as becoming pronounced as /[ɛ]/ and pronounced as /[ɐ]/, while when unstressed they are pronounced as /[e]/ and pronounced as /[ə]/ . Parker Jones, however, did not find a reduction of /a/ to pronounced as /[ə]/ in the phonetic analysis of a young speaker from Hilo, Hawaiʻi; so there is at least some variation in how /a/ is realised.[3] pronounced as //e// also tends to become pronounced as /[ɛ]/ next to pronounced as //l//, pronounced as //n//, and another pronounced as /[ɛ]/, as in Pele pronounced as /[pɛlɛ]/. Some grammatical particles vary between short and long vowels. These include a and o "of", ma "at", na and no "for". Between a back vowel pronounced as //o// or pronounced as //u// and a following non-back vowel (pronounced as //a e i//), there is an epenthetic pronounced as /[w]/, which is generally not written. Between a front vowel pronounced as //e// or pronounced as //i// and a following non-front vowel (pronounced as //a o u//), there is an epenthetic pronounced as /[j]/ (a y sound), which is never written.
| Starting with pronounced as //i// | align=center | pronounced as /iu/ | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting with pronounced as //o// | align=center | pronounced as /ou/ | align=center | pronounced as /oi/ | |||||
| Starting with pronounced as //e// | align=center | pronounced as /eu/ | align=center | pronounced as /ei/ | |||||
| Starting with pronounced as //a// | align=center | pronounced as /au/ | align=center | pronounced as /ai/ | align=center | pronounced as /ao/ | align=center | pronounced as /ae/ |
The short-vowel diphthongs are pronounced as //iu, ou, oi, eu, ei, au, ai, ao, ae//. In all except perhaps pronounced as //iu//, these are falling diphthongs. However, they are not as tightly bound as the diphthongs of English, and may be considered vowel sequences. (The second vowel in such sequences may receive the stress, but in such cases it is not counted as a diphthong.) In fast speech, pronounced as //ai// tends to pronounced as /[ei]/ and pronounced as //au// tends to pronounced as /[ou]/, conflating these diphthongs with pronounced as //ei// and pronounced as //ou//.
There are only a limited number of vowels which may follow long vowels, and some authors treat these sequences as diphthongs as well: pronounced as //oːu, eːi, aːu, aːi, aːo, aːe//.
| Starting with pronounced as //o// | align=center | pronounced as /oːu/ | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting with pronounced as //e// | align=center | pronounced as /eːi/ | |||||||
| Starting with pronounced as //a// | align=center | pronounced as /aːu/ | align=center | pronounced as /aːi/ | align=center | pronounced as /aːo/ | align=center | pronounced as /aːe/ |
Research done by Newman (1951) suggests Niʻihau dialect being among the fastest spoken Hawaiian dialects. He reported a Niʻihau woman having a reading speed of 170 words per minute whereas a man from Kalapana read at a slower 120.[4]
The fast pace of the Niʻihau dialect causes a number of phonemic reductions.[5] Newman lists three examples of this phenomenon:
| 'living' | noho ʻana | nooana | |
| 'two of my sisters' | ʻelua oʻu kika | elu aʻu tita | |
| 'one room' | hoʻokahi lumi | hoʻotaii lumi |
Niʻihau dialect does not use an ʻokina to represent glottal stops nor a kahakō (macron) to indicate long vowels. The Hawaiian word /ʔoːlelo/ ("language") is spelt olelo in Niʻihau and ʻōlelo in Standard Hawaiian.