Hau`oli la hanau – Happy birthday
Aloha – hello, goodbye, love
I’m drawing a complete blank of other phrases. What else do I write?

Hurray! Just the responder I hoped to reach.

Some kind of congratulations, for one.

@Hawaii_Jake There’s one you use that’s like H’omolakai or something?

Ho`omaika`i – congratulations

@Hawaii_Jake Mahalo is one you use often

Ohana means family. No one gets left behind or forgotten.

Maika`i – good
Putting ho`o in front of it makes it a verb, so it’s something like “Do good!” or “you did good!”
The little thing that is incorrectly called an apostrophe is an `okina. It’s a diacritical mark denoting a glottal stop.

Mahalo – thanks
Mahalo nui loa – thanks very much

Ohana – family

Malama – take care (I’m unable to make the kahako over the first a. It’s a straight line denoting to need to draw out the pronunciation of the vowel.)
Pono – to do well
Malama pono – take good care (said to ailing individuals)

I use a lot of Hawaiian words in my speech, and I often don’t even notice.
Kuleana – responsibility
Opala – dust bin
Pehea `oe – How are you?

Even when we speak English, we often do it using Hawaiian word orders or literal translations of the Hawaiian phrases.

ʻono. Delicious, tasty, savory; to relish, crave; deliciousness, flavor, savor.

Also an ocean fish.

Kupuna – elders, elderly people; a word heard often
Keiki – child, children; another often used word
Kane – man
Wahine – woman
Aina – the land
Kakou – everyone (often heard in greeting with “aloha no kakou” meaning “hello, everyone”.)

Kipu. – - forbidden area

@Tropical_Willie Thank you! I think the correct spelling is kapu. It means forbidden. It can be used for an area or an action.

You are right and my typing stinks.

All the lurve for @Hawaii_Jake!

I think the tallest peaks in Hawaii are Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.
Based on that, I’d say that mauna is the Hawaiian word for mountain.

@Brian1946 You are correct.

One interesting thing about Hawaiian is that it has no consonant blends. All consonants are separated by vowels.

Wonderful, @Hawaii_Jake! Thank you,

Expanding the Q a little bit while you’re on a roll here, how about the literal meaning of some of the well-known place names? I was wondering, for instance, if the mauna mentioned by @Brian1946 means volcano as well as mountain.

Honolulu – - sheltered bay

I might have written Mele Kalikimaka once or twice, which is Hawaiian for Merry Christmas. I do the song by the same name by Jimmy Buffett in my zumba class during Christmas.

@Jeruba I honestly don’t know if mauna also means volcano. All the mountains here were at some point remnants of a volcano.

@Hawaii_Jake I hope @Jeruba doesn’t mind this quick question piggy backed on hers. Do the schools teach the language, and do you hear it being spoken fluently around you?

@JLeslie We have Hawaiian immersion schools in some places. It is taught in some schools.

Kamehameha Schools teach it. They have many resources and use them well. The University of Hawaii campuses here on Oahu and over in Hilo teach it in large language departments, and their drama departments produce plays in Hawaiian.

I would hear it spoken around me occasionally when I lived on the Big Island where there are more native Hawaiians. I rarely hear it in Honolulu.

I just realized no one here probably knows how to pronounce the Hawaiian words.

Use Italian or Japanese vowels:
a = ah
e = eh
i = ee
o = oh
u = oo

“W” is sometimes pronounced like a “v”, and in some words “u” makes a “w” sound like the name of the island of Kauai.

Everything gets pronounced. There are no silent letters.

Mahalo!

Every syllable ends in a vowel !

Same pronunciation in Spanish! Good to know. That’s very helpful, because reading phonetically in Spanish is natural for me. We noticed the same when we were in Japan trying to say a few words.

Only difference is Spanish has silent H when it is the first letter.

@Hawaii_Jake , Are you saying that the o sounds in Honolulu are long o’s? Ho No Lulu?

^^It is surprising that US English didn’t spell it incorrectly as Hanalulu to match how “we” say it.

We actually write it Honolulu and then pronounce it incorrectly.

It is supposed to be pronounced ho no loo loo.

@LostInParadise Yes, the correct pronunciation is with o’s that sound like “oh”.