If you speak a Romance language -- French, Spanish, or Italian -- your're one up on learning Hawaiian. You know how to pronounce the vowels.
Like speakers of those languages, the Hawaiiians pronounced the vowels ah, eh, ee, oh, oo.
Hawaiian words can be intimidating because they sometimes appear fantasticaly long and composed entirely of k's and vowels.
But rather than cross your eyes wenn you see "Kalaniana'ole," break it into parts and sound it out: Ka-la-nee-ah-na-oh-lay.
Hawaiian has only 13 letters: the five vowels and eight consonants (h, k, l, m, n, p, w and the 'okina, or glottal stop).
Some other rules:
* When you see the same two vowels together, you ought to see an
apostrophe, the 'okina, between them. That tells you to break
the breath, as in "oh-oh." So Ka'a'awa is pronounced
ka-ah-ahva.
* You will never see two consonants together in the Hawaiian language.
* Besides the glotal stop, modern Hawaiian uses the macron or kahako, a line over certain vowels that lenghtens the sound. So a kahako over the "a" makes the sound in "fall."
* The "w" is sometimes heard as a "v" after "i," "e" and "a". Just go with the flow on that one.