That's how the cognoscenti are spelling it now--Hawai'i, with an apostrophe. Or maybe the locals have always spelled it that way. Or maybe they're spelling it that way again? I read while we were there that there was a time when the Hawaiians were concerned that their language was dying out, so they've been trying hard to preserve it. Ergo, the apostrophe.
I think it's pretty cool. I love to hear the language spoken. The apostrophe denotes a glottal stop and the the 'w' is pronounced like a 'v'. I wish I could insert a little file at this point that would demonstrate audibly how they say it, but I don't know how to do that. So with respect to the people of Hawai'i, I've put the apostrophe in the title of this blog entry and hope I've piqued your curiosity about their great language and culture.
Moving on, the short version of this entry goes like this...
We escaped the Alaskan winter for about ten days of fun in the sun. That was the plan anyway. As it turns out, the Kona coast received a ridiculous amount of rain while we were there. Nonetheless, we had a great time, saw lots of neat stuff, met great people, and cannot wait to return.
You can view a few of our photos here.
When I have a bit more time, I'll gab a bit more about what we saw and did.
Enjoy!
-M
