Category: Hawaiian Language Tech

Miscellaneous posts about the use of Hawaiian Language in technology

Type ‘Okina and Kahakō in Android

I purchased a Droid X phone in July 2010 with the specific desire to see the Android operating system support Hawaiian and other Polynesian languages as iOS (iPhone/iPod/iPad) does. While Android may someday have native support for ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i like iOS, there is an interim solution to typing the ‘okina and kahakō on Android.

Handy Font Utilities for Indigenous Language Use

I’ll probably create a page for these things I come across, but am still trying to figure out the best way to approach organizing this website. I’m frequently find myself lamenting that I don’t have a system for easily determining what default fonts on Mac OS support Hawaiian. I know a few off the top of my head – Lucida Grande, Helvetica, Times New Roman, Palatino, Courier, Didot – but not all. This is complicated by the fact that some fonts have most of the vowel kahakō combinations but not the ‘okina. A few have the ‘okina but not the vowel kahakō…

Apple Fonts With ‘Okina and Kahakō

I got tired of trying to remember every font that does and does not have the ‘okina and/or kahakō in it, so using the Apple Font Tools I came up with a spreadsheet that shows which fonts have which characters. It’s available for download at scribd.com. As always, there is no guarantee or tech support offered. Please don’t email asking why you don’t have a particular font on your system. Perhaps it’s just bad luck. Hopefully someday Apple will add all of these characters to all of the fonts that ship with OS X. Or OS XI, or… Apple Fonts…

How To Give Good ‘Okina

How To Give Good ‘Okina I’ve been asked this question so many times I decided it was time to write an article about it. The question (and its many variations) boil down to this: “What is the ‘okina, why do I need to use it in my web pages, what is the right character to use, what fonts should I use, what should I do if the font I want to use doesn’t have that character, and what other issues are involved in using it?” Read on for the answers to these questions…

Technology In The Hawaiian Language Revitalization Movement

I was honored to be asked to speak to the Big Island Internet Society’s meeting yesterday, and was asked to put together a list of links to pages and articles that provided more information on these topics. So here are a few: Wired Magazine artice on our early efforts to establish Leokī Kualono – website of Ka Haka ‘Ula College of Hawaiian Language Ulukau– the Hawaiian Digital Library ‘Aha Pūnana Leo’s Niuolahiki online class website Unicode and Hawaiian Language ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i – A Rich Oral History, A Bright Digital Future – Article from Cultural Survival Quarterly Leokī: A Powerful Voice…

Google, Hawaiian and “Native American” Languages

I’ve received a lot of great feedback and compliments from people regarding the development of the Hawaiian language interface for Google. Mahalo to everyone who sent notes of congratulations for the accomplishment and recognition from the Governor’s office. I would like to address one element that came out in several stories, including the announcement by the Governer’s office, on this development. In these stories, it was stated that “Hawaiian has become the first native American language available through the “Google in Your Language” program”, or something similar. Hawaiian is not a native American language, and in the press release that…

Macron Support in iPhone 3.0 Update

I laid out $9.95 for the iPhone 3.0 update for my iPod Touch last night, and just discovered why it was worth it – the standard US Keyboard now allows you to insert the vowel-kahak? characters and ‘okina. Here’s how you do it: When you want to type an ‘okina-vowel, touch and hold down your finger over the vowel for a second or two, and it will pop-up a list of available diacritic characters (see the graphic at right to see how this list looks when I held down over the letter “a” on the keyboard). Whether the vowel-macron is…

More To iPod Touch Hawaiian Support

I posted a few days ago about finding the Hawai‘i region in the iPod Touch, and apparently the system-level support is even better than I thought. I set up a few locations using the Weather application, and found that it displayed the days of the week in Hawaiian as well. Too cool. What would be cooler would be to have the Hawaiian keyboard, too. I did find that I could not post this screenshot to this blog using WordPress for iPhone application – I kept getting: “Communication Error. Operation could not be completed (NSXMLParserErrorDomain error 5.” Hmmm.

Go! Goes Native (Language)

I got a sneek peek at this Go! Airlines website which has been translated, as much as their technology currently allows, into Hawaiian. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin carries a story on the work, which includes participation by many individuals. This is a wonderful development, and I hope it encourages other commercial entities to offer Hawaiian language versions of their websites. As Kenneth Makuk?ne notes, he and I have often spoken of their being new opportunities for Hawaiian language speakers and graduates from our language programs beyond becoming teachers of the language. The language needs to grow into more contemporary contexts if…

Is A Hawaiian Language Social Network Possible? It Seems So

Mahalo to Conn for pointing out the localizability of Ning. I’ve been searching for a platform on which to develop a Hawaiian language social network, and Ning just might do the trick. Ning is a social networking site co-founded by Mark Andreeson (of Netscape fame) and Gina Bianchini. It looks to have enough functionality to be attractive to our students who are using MySpace extensively, and includes enough interoperability with other services (Google Video, YouTube and Flickr) to be very useful. You can also directly upload videos (up to 100Mg each), photos (up to 10Mg each), have a blog and…

Back To Top