Wiktionary talk:About Hawaiian

Is there a name for the language spoken prior to 1788? (It wouldn't have boys' names taken from the Bible.)

Presumably you mean a name other than Hawaiian. Is there any reason there would be one? Renard Migrant (talk) 20:04, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

(New at this...) I think it's of historical interest to know the breadth and limits of a language developed so far away on the language family tree from our own, untainted by European contact. Once Captain Cook arrove* on the scene, the language would have changed markedly and permanently. Surely someone has made an effort to record this anthropological specimen, and she may well have named it. Have you heard? Bear54LA (talk) 23:53, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

* - [my contribution to the English language]

--Gil Bear54LA (talk) 23:53, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Don't confuse a change in vocabulary with a change to a whole new language. In the period since the end of Middle English, English has had a huge influx of words from the Americas, from India, from China, etc- but it's still English. Although Hawaii was pretty isolated, we know of at least two waves of settlement, and the islands the Hawaiians came from had contact with other island groups, so you can't really talk about some pure, unmixed original language that got corrupted by European influence. Just like anyone else, the Hawaiians borrowed (and are still borrowing) words from other languages. You need to be careful not to make living, breathing languages and cultures into artificially posed, preserved specimens to be pinned in a museum display case somewhere. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:02, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Eloquently -- and convincingly -- put, Chuck.

In my original post, I had hoped to discover a term -- akin to Middle English -- that might have been used by linguists to identify what one might call "Pre-Cook Hawaiian" or, perhaps more academically, "1778 Hawaiian". While admittedly neither pure nor unmixed, it nonetheless represents a specimen of parallel language evolution that is both less mixed and more recent than many others. I find it intriguing, and perhaps I will find someone else who also does. --Gil Bear54LA (talk) 20:10, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

adjectives

The non-inclusion of adjectives such as "wikiwiki" on Wiktionary is confusing for non-Hawaiian-speakers. It might be good to have a footnote explaining this for entries on Hawaiian words in Wiktionary that are commonly listed as adjectives in other Hawaiian to English dictionaries. Nicole Sharp (talk) 08:16, 8 September 2023 (UTC)