Inclusive and Exclusive Pronouns
Aloha kāua. This lesson continues on from Video 0702 which introduced the idea of papani (pronouns) in Hawaiian.
In this video, we will approach one of the hardest aspects of Hawaiian papani for English language speakers: the need to distinguish whether or not you are including the person to whom you are speaking when you refer to two or more people using a pronoun. This idea is called exclusivity and inclusivity; in other words, the pronouns themselves are often referred to as being “inclusive” or “exclusive” of the person you are speaking with.
The two papani here discussed are kāua and māua, with both mean “we” or “us” in Hawaiian, but refer only to two people. The next video in this set, V0704, continues with the dual papani, and that is followed by V0705 which will teach you about papani used to three or more people.
It may sound like there are so many papani in Hawaiian: 11 in total. Eleven is certainly plenty, but don’t forget that English has many more and you can master these Hawaiian ones as easily as you have the English ones. Just practice a little using the exercises which will be provided soon below the video resources on this page. (The PDF lessons are still being created.)
Let’s get started! The video is about 10 minutes long.
Video Links for V0702 Papani Part I
We are working on replacing this video.