Hawaiian Words
Author : Kendall Bingham binghamkl@umkc.edu
Hawaiian words can be intimidating to attempt to pronounce. Words like humuhumunukunukuapua'a look like someone may have fallen asleep on the keyboard. The language is actually very simple and only contains 12 characters; 5 vowels and 7 consonants. This assignment has the students taking a string of a Hawaiian word and outputting the phonetic version.
This project was assigned to CS101 students within the first 6 weeks of their semester. It would be a fairly easy set of rules to change and adapt into fictional languages. The program they were asked to write would continually prompt the user for a Hawaiian word. It would warn the user if the word contained any invalid symbols or characters. If the word was valid, then it would output the phonetic pronunciation for the word. The phonetic output would break up the syllables with a – after each vowel sound. They would then query the user if they desired to continue.
Some sounds are pronounced differently depending on their position. For instance a w is pronounced as a v sound if it is after an i or an e, but is a w sound elsewhere. So they weren’t just looking at the current character, but also had to look to see what the previous character if there was one. The rest of the consonants (p, k, h, l, m, n) are pronounced the same as their English counterparts.
The vowels (a, e, i, o, u) have a given sound when by itself, but when grouped they can have different sounds. i has a ee sound like in bee, and u has on oo sound like mood. However, and iu together sounds like ew, while ui sounds like ooey in gooey. This required the student to look at the next character and group them if they had a combined sound.
Student Skills
This was a CS101 program given less than halfway through semester in Python
- String manipulation. Iterating over strings as well as checking the character in front and behind for certain instances
- Loops
Phonetic Guide
| p, k, h, l, m, n | Pronounced like the English versions. |
| w - start of word | Either pronounced as a w or a v. We will pronounce it as a w |
| w - after the letter 'a' | Either pronounced as a w or a v. We will pronounce it as a w |
| w - after 'i' or 'e' | Pronounced as a v sound |
| w - after 'u' or 'o' | Sounds like w |
| a | sounds like ah. eg. Austin - ah-stin |
| e | sounds like eh. eg. egg - eh-gg |
| i | sounds like ee. eg. bee |
| o | sounds like oh. eg. obey - oh bay |
| u | sounds like oo. eg. mood - m oo d |
| ai | sounds like eye. eg. Ice |
| ae | sounds like eye. eg. Ice |
| ao | sounds like ow. eg. How |
| au | sounds like ow. eg. How |
| ei | sounds like ay. eg. Hay |
| eu | sounds like eh-oh |
| iu | sounds like ew. eg. Chew |
| oi | sounds like oy. eg. Soy |
| ou | sounds like ow. eg. How |
| ui | sounds like ooey. eg Gooey |
| Word | Correct Output |
| aloha | Ah-loh-hah |
| Kakahiaka | Kah-kah-hee-ah-kah |
| Mahalo | Mah-hah-loh |
| E komo mai | Eh koh-moh meye |
| maui | Mow-ee |
| kane | Kah-neh |
| humuhumunukunukuapua'a | Hoo-moo-hoo-moo-noo-koo-noo-koo-ah-poo-ah'ah |
Assignment File
| File Description | Link |
| Student Assignment | .docx .pdf |
Meta Data
| Summary | Students develop a program to produce the phonetic for a Hawaiian word. |
| Topics | String iteration and manipulation, loops, functions. |
| Audience | Beginning CS1 students with exposure to strings and loops. |
| Difficulty |
This is an easy to medium difficulty level, about the difficulty of converting Roman Numerals to decimal. |
| Strengths |
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| Weaknesses |
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| Dependencies |
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| Variants |
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