Thread: Seriousness Learning a new language
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Old 07-01-2009, 04:45 PM   #123
GraceKrispy
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In learning Hawaiian, children are first taught the Hakalama-- which seems to me to be similar to a syllabary?

It takes all the consonants and puts them together with each vowel to make a system. The vowels are a, e, i, o, u and the consonants are h, k, l, m, n, p, w, ' . So the first line of hakalama is :

ha ka la ma na pa wa 'a

then goes to: he ke le me ne pe we 'e

and so forth. Then it is sung again, this time with the accent marking (kahako) on top of each vowel. Once you can recognize and read the hakalama and have some fluency (ha, he, hi, ho, hu, etc), you are able to read all Hawaiian words.

I guess it wouldn't be a true syllabary, as you can look at the letters separately, and each does have a sound, however, you would never see a consonant standing alone, or two consonants together, or a consonant at the end of a word. It all revolves around the 5 vowel sounds (and you can put those together in as long a string as you like).
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