Search for cognate words in other Polynesian languages

Add this note: "For some rare words, particularly in older texts and mele, you can find a closely related word in another Polyinesian language, particularly those closely related to Hawaiian, such as Tahitian, Maori, Rarotongan (Cook Island Maori), and Marquesan. Reflexes of words that are rarely seen in Hawaiian are often documented in the dictionaries of these languages. The meaning will probably not be identical to its meaning in Hawaiian due to "semantic drift" but sometimes you will find a definition close enough to help you figure out the appropriate meaning in the context you are examining.

Note that the Tahitian and Marquesan dictionaries are in French. If you don't read French, you can highlight a definition and use the "Translate" feature in your browser. [Add screen shot of an example]

We should link here to the Fare Vanaa printed dictionary which does a much better job of incorporating Davies than PE does with Andrews.

I have PDFs of both the Fare Vanaa Tahitian dictionary and the Buse Cook Island Maori dictinariy that I made myself. We canʻt put them up for everyone, but if only our students have access to this site, we can put up links for both.

main sites for accessing the Hawaiian dictionaries

Let's not use this, as true as it is. There are lots and lots of examples of mistaken translation in the Fornander version of Kelou Kamakau.

Mamaka Kaiao is a dictionary for newly created words and a few old words that were omitted by the older dictionaries. It is not intended for translating older Hawaiian texts from 19th and early 20th centuries.

Replace with this: 1. Order of entries. Unlike Andrews, the Andrews-Parker dictionary arranges words according to the English alphabet.

1. Pronunciation. The apostrophe symbol used to indicate pronunciation is not an ʻokina but, rather, is meant to indicate word stress. Likewise, the symbols for long and short vowels usually tell us whether or not a vowel is stressed or not. Although Parker grew up speaking Hawaiian, these symbols are often misleading and are mean something different that what they mean today. The only cases wher Parker's pronuciation symbols are helpful to us today is when he indicates a final vowel is stressed or if he indicates an unexpected stressed syllable. Sinde there are a few words in Andrews-Parker that are not in Pukui-Elbert, you might have to make use of his pronuciation symbols, but do this with considerable caution. Wherever possible, see if there is a cognage in Tahitian, Maori, or Rarotongan and see how the word is pronounced there.

2. New words and definitions. Parker was a skilled orator and writer in Hawaiian and edited a Hawaiian newspaper for many years. Consequently, he encountered many many words and meanings that were not found in Andrews dictionary, some of which are also missing from the Pukui-Elbert dictionary. It is, therefore, always a good idea to check Andrews-Parker when you donʻt find contextually suitable definition in Pukui-Elbert.

3. New fefintions. For most words, Partker repeats Andrews's arrangement and defiitions. While it is relatively easy to find new words added by Parker, it is easy to miss his added definitions since these are often inserted in the midst of meanings reprinted from Andrews.

replace with the following:

1. Order of entries. The first thing to remember in working with Andrews dictionary is that its entries are arranged according to the Hawaiian pī]āpā, not the English alphabet (like Pukui-Elbert). Some researchers have wrongly concluded that a word is not found in Andrews' dictionary simply because they looked in the wrong place.

2. Orthography. The use of the ʻokina and kahakō in spelling Hawaiian words did not become common until the 2nd half of the 20th century. Andrews published his dictionary in 1865, so that words that are distinguished today by the ʻokina and kahakō are lumped together under a single spelling. Thus, au, au, āu, ʻau, and aʻu were all defined under the headwords spelled as AU. Also, because of the way Andrews collected and assembled his data, you will often encounter the same headword multiple times, usually, but not always, with a different set of definitions. For example, there are eleven separate headwords for AU. These separate headwords are sometimes based on pronunciation differences, but sometimes words that are pronounced differently were defined under the same headword entry other words with the same pronunciation are listed under separate headword entries. Andrews worked tirelessly on his dictionary for decades, but his health failed before he was able to fully consolidate and organize all the information he had collected.

3. Missing definitions in Pukui-Elbert. There are thousands of words in Pukui-Elbert that are not found in Andrews, but there are also some words in Andrews that are not found in Pukui-Elbert, particularly those found in older others or the Bible. On the other hand, hunderds of Anderews' definitions for words found in both dictionaries were not transfered into Pukui-Elbert. Thus, when you don't find a contextually appropropriate definition for a word in Pukui-Elbert, be sure to read through all of Andrews definitions for all of the headwords (mius the ʻokina and kahakō) that might represent the 19th century spelling of the word you are researching.

4. Hawaiian definitions. Andrews often asked Native Hawaiian scholards to send him definitions of words and many of these are preserved in his dictionary. Pay particularly close attention to these because the often represent uncommoin meanings of wors as used in mele.

5. Abbreviations. Make sure you understand the abbreviations uses by Andrews. We will go over some of these in one of the following sections.

6. Andrews' word book. As he collected words, Andrews wrote them down in various notebooks together with samples of their use and, sometimes, a Hawaiian definition provided by a native speaker. Whenever you see a Hawaiian sentence or phrase in his dictionary, it probably is taken directly from his notebook. In the printed text, many of these Hawaiian language quotations contain misprints, in which case you can consult Andrews final word book which is now at the Bishop Museum, but which you can consult as an IHLRT web resource (link???).