Fwd: The Garden Island introduced the ‘okina to the newspaper world of Hawai‘i

[Liko Puha]

http://www.kauaiworld.com/display/inn_news/news03.txt

Friday, June 20, 2003

The Garden Island introduced the ~Qokina to the newspaper world of Hawai~Qi

By CHRIS COOK - TGI Editor

The ~Qokina was introduced in the pages of The Garden Island in the
mid-1980s, when Jean Holmes served as editor.

The addition of the symbol, which appears in words like Lihu~Qe and pa~Qu
and denotes a short pause in pronunciation, was a first for a daily
newspaper in Hawai~Qi, and thus the world.

Though a number of Hawaiian language newspapers were published in the
nineteenth century and early twentieth century, none used the ~Qokina. With
Hawaiian as a first language for Native Hawaiians in those days, most knew
from memory where the breaks came in the words of their language.

The concept of adding the ~Qokina to the pages of The Garden Island came to
Holmes at a conference held at Kaua~Qi Community College.

She, along with radio announcer Bill Dahle of the Westside AM station
KUAI, attended a Native Hawaiian language conference held at Kaua~Qi
Community College.

They were inspired at the conference by becoming aware of the widespread
rebirth of the Hawaiian language in daily life in the Hawaiian Islands,
and saw they had an opportunity to do their part in reestablishing the
Hawaiian language on Kaua~Qi.

"We learned how to treat the Hawaiian language properly," Holmes said in a
call from her home in Lawa~Qi.

"I started it and we've been do it every since," she said of the use of
the ~Qokina for almost 20 years in each issue of The Garden Island.

"It was part of a general feeling that Hawaiians weren't being treated
right in their home place," she said of the cultural ramifications of
bringing the Hawaiian language to the forefront of a daily newspaper.
"Many of them said to me that they were being looked down upon because of
the their brown skin and Hawaiian ways. I did my best to treat them a
little more fairly, that this was their home and we could learn from
them."

She said Dahle focused on how to correctly pronounce Hawaiian words, and
she researched how to correctly typeset the language for use in print.

Holmes said while editing the newspaper she frequently checked the proper
spelling of Hawaiian words by referring to the "Hawaiian-English
Dictionary" collected by Mary Kawena Pukui and Samuel Elbert for the
University of Hawai~Qi Press.

She said Pukui considered the ~Qokina as "another letter of the alphabet,"
not just as a break between letters.

"We didn't have the facilities for a macron, but we did have facilities
for using the ~Qokina," she said of introducing the Hawaiian letter into
the typesetting system at The Garden Island.

The macron, a line over a vowel that denotes a long accent on the letter
known as a kahako in Hawaiian, wasn't feasible to use in those days, for
it would have required typesetters to hand draw a line over each vowel.

Today it takes a special set of letters in a digital font, and enhanced
computer keyboard controls, to type out the kahako. The ~Qokina is readily
created on a keyboard by using a backward apostrophe character.

Computer operating systems are beginning to include the Hawaiian language
keyboard and character set as part of their basic type fonts, making
typesetting in the Hawaiian language a straight forward operation. The
latest version of the Macintosh operating system, known as Jaguar, is the
first to include the Hawaiian keyboard as a built in option on every Apple
Computer sold across the world.

The inclusion by Apple came at the request of Keola Donaghy of Hale
Kuamo~Qo at the University of Hawai~Qi at Hilo and others involved in
preserving and perpetuating the Hawaiian language. Donaghy is known as a
master of Hawaiian typesetting and font creation.

"Hawaiian people told me they were pleased," Holmes said when asked if she
ever received any honors for being the first editor to use the ~Qokina in a
daily newspaper. She replied that being asked to become a member of the
Order of Kamehameha was honor enough. Today Holmes, now a longtime member
of the Native Hawaiian organization, is the chaplain for the statewide
group's Kaua~Qi chapter.

Julia Neal, who took over from Holmes as editor in the mid-1980s, expanded
on using the ~Qokina by running a weekly news column written in the
Hawaiian language by Ni~Qihau native Ilei Beniamina.

Neal said the roots of the use of what's known as Hawaiian letters in The
Garden Island go back to the landmark Con-Con constitutional convention
held in 1978.

She said she worked on what was called the Hawaiian committee at the
constitutional convention. The committee was headed up by Frenchy De Soto
of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

"There was a push for (Hawaiian language) immersion schools and the return
of Hawaiian cultural practices," Neal said of the focus of the committee.

Today Neal lives in Pahala on the Big Island. She publishes and edits the
weekly community newspaper the Kau Calendar.

TGI Editor Chris Cook can be reached at ccook at pulitzer.net or 245-3681
(ext. 227).