THE ONLINE

LEARNING LIBRARY

This chart presents the tense/aspect structures for verbs (painu) including negation and the usage in agent emphatic, situation emphatic, and relative clause sentence structures.

Here you'll find a basic dialog for introducing yourself to someone else and interacting in a basic conversation. You'll also find other general questions that may give you ideas for things to talk about in a general conversation.

This section discusses the articles and delimiters: Ke, Ka, Kēia, Kēlā, Kēnā, Nā, Kekahi, and Mau.

The articles "the" and "a" ("the dog", "a dog") and the delimiters "this" and "that", as well as plural markers, precede Hawaiian nouns and are called "kaʻi" (which is the Hawaiian verb meaning "to lead"). 

There are two types of possession: A-Class and O-Class. In this section the differences between the two classes are discussed

Personal pronouns (me, you, them, etc.) and possessive pronouns (mine, yours, ours, etc.) are some of the most basic elements of the Hawaiian language. 

A thing, or some quantity of something, can be possessed by a noun (kikino) or pronoun (papani). Possession can convey a sense of ownership or it can simply imply that something is located with something else.

The Aia sentence structure tells where something is located, for example: The key is on the table." It is considered a fundamental sentence pattern.

Pepeke ʻAike He - Sometimes referred to as the "Have a/Has a" sentence type, the He sentence tells that something in a particular category (it "is a" particular type of thing: a good dog, a calm day) or someone has a particular thing. We say, "He has a car" or "His house has large windows". The negative form of the He sentence is also discussed ("That is not a friendly dog" or "She does not have a pencil") and the use of K-Less Possessives with numbers ("He has four children" or "She is 30 years old" i.e. "She has 30 years")

The ʻO Equational Sentence (Pepeke ʻAike ʻO) says that two things are equal; one of them is the other one. It's not simply that, "That is a car", it's that fact, that in this case, "That is the car".

The ʻOi Aku sentence structure is used to say that one thing has more of a quality than something else, for example: This dog is more energetic than that cat.

The Emi Mai sentence structure is used to say that one thing has less of a quality than something else, for example: The cat is less energetic than this dog.

A relative clause (Kāhulu Pepeke) is a verb structure that modifies a noun, such as: "I saw a dog that was running". The noun, "dog" is modified by the verb phrase "was running". There are two main categories of Kāhulu Pepeke and each category has sub-types.

Words used for family members are listed here such as "parent" (makua) and "child" (keiki) along with a number of less common terms such as "foster parent of an older child or adult ("makua hoʻokama").

What time is it? This section explaines Hawaiian time periods (days, weeks, months, years, eras) and how time was referenced in pre-contact times. Additionally, a complete explanation is given regarding how to tell the time of day from a modern clock.

This page lists the Hawaiian words used for grammar, parts of speech, and sentence structure.