Hawaiian is a remarkable, enduring, and beautiful language. Historically, it began as a proto-Polynesian language that evolved into a unique language spoken by peoples of the Hawaiian archipelago around 1000 AD. It was established as the official language of Hawaii by King Kamehameha III in 1839, studied in depth by Western Missionaries (who wanted to write a Hawaiian Bible to aid in converting the islanders to Christianity), eventually banned in 1896 to forcibly promote English, and has since the 20th century been re-embraced. Phonetically, it is both simple and surprising: it consists of only eight consonant phonemes and 5 vowel phonemes, but it has a number of free consonant variations (such as “p/b” or “v/w” or (the rather surprising) “t/k”) and 25 dual-phoneme vowel diphthongs. Aurally, it has a lovely, song-like quality with percussive glottal stops and rhythmic word-stresses.
All that being said, one really ought to re-evaluate the beauty of any language that refers to appetizers as pu-pu.
