0702V Papani Pronouns #1: Au, Aʻu, ʻOe, ʻOia, and Ia

Learn The Basics About Hawaiian Pronouns

In Hawaiian, we call the personal pronouns «papani». There are 13 papani to learn in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi. This lesson will introduce you to the first five: “I”, “me”, “you”, “he/she”, and “him/her”.

Learning Guide

The Hawaiian personal pronouns in the first, second, and third person are shown in the two tables below. Spend some time looking at each part of the tables, first trying to understand what you see in the context of English language, and then learning the Hawaiian language equivalents. You could even print them out and put them on your “icebox” (refrigerator) so you see it daily for a few weeks.

Papani Pronoun Tables

Papani – Subject Position
Person	English	Papani
First	I	au (wau)
Second	you	ʻoe
Third	he/she	ʻoia

Papani – Object Position
Person	English	Papani
First	me	aʻu
Second	you	ʻoe
Third	him/her	ia

I and Me

ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi and English both use two different pronouns for the first person: «au» is used in the same place as “I” in English —for example, “I speak to you.”— and «aʻu» is used in the same place as “me” in English —for example, “You speak to me.”

He / She: Gender In The Third Person

ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi does not encode gender in its papani pronouns. Thus for the third person —”he/she” and “him/her”— there are only two pronouns: «ʻoia» is used in the same place as “he” or “she” in English —for example, “She speaks to you”— and «ia» in the same place as “him” or “her” in English —for example, “She speaks to him”.

“It” Is Not A Pronoun In Hawaiian

Finally, the English language pronoun “it” is NOT a pronoun in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi; it is an article. In most places, I recommend you do not even try to put “it” into your ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi at all, especially as a direct object —e.g., “I eat it”. As I tell my students: “Leave ‘it’ out – just leave it out!” But let’s leave that lesson for another post.

The Pronunciation of «Au»

Note that for the first person singluar pronoun “I” we can opt to either use au or wau. Au is most likely the oldest form of this papani and is widely used in Eastern Polynesia (Tahitian being the exception; like Hawaiian, it has both «au» and «vau»). The papani «wau», if you choose to use it, should be pronounced with a leading soft w-glide, /w/ sound, or soft /v/ sound, never a greatly aspirated /v/ sound like the one we often use in English where we allow a lot of air to escape the lips (eg. “very” or “vivacious”). I suggest that you pronounce it and write it as au even though there’s a case to be made that it’s harder to pronounce properly than wau, which probably leads to the latter’s popularity with beginner speakers.

You will not really be able to get a sense of how to pronounce au properly until you start putting it into phrases and, later, sentences. The most common problem I hear is students putting an ʻokina before it – so try your best to run it together with the word that preceedes it.

Should «ʻOia» Be Written As One Or Two Words?

Prior to the 1978 “Spelling Convention” in Honolulu which codified many of the ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi spelling practices we use today, he/she was written as «ʻoia» or «oia» (without ʻokina). It still appears in the current Pūkuʻi-Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary, Revised & Enlarged Edition (1986) as «ʻoia» which is the version I prefer, since I can see no logical reason to split a pronoun into two pieces. Nevertheless, it has become very common to write it as «ʻo ia», so you will undoubtedly see it that way. Regardless of how it is written, it should always be pronounced as one word, with no noticeable rise in pitch on the «-ia» part. Modern speakers who write it as «ʻo ia» do actually pronounce it as one word, which makes the desire to write it as two even more perplexing.

Next Steps

Following this lesson, you will need to learn about something very important indeed in Polynesian thinking: the concept of “inclusive” versus “exclusive” papani. So after you are done with this video, go on to the second video in this series, 0703V Papani Pronouns #2: Kāua and Māua, which will explain the concept.

aloha ʻoe
Kaliko

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