How best to use ʻŌlelo Online
Welcome to the Study Help page. Find out how best to use the resources on ʻŌlelo Online to learn Hawaiian at home or while on the go!
Your Learning Style
First decide on how you best like to learn.
- Visual Learners > Use the Videos section first
- Auditory (Aural) Learners > Use the Audio & Books section first
- Logical Learners > Start with the Grammar Lessons and Texts
- Always start with the lowest numbered items in any Series and work your way up. As you become comfortable with the basics, feel free to explore other parts of the site.
- Take your time so that you really understand what you have learned. Learning a language online takes some patience, but you will gain an excellent foundation which you can use when you actually start to interact with other speakers. If you are just wanting to learn how to read and write in Hawaiian, you will progress relatively quickly.
- Each Series contains links to practice questions and answers as well as quizzes.
- All of the lessons contain new vocabulary words as well as information about Hawaiian kuanaʻike (world view) and moʻomeheu (culture).
Individual lessons and associated assets have been grouped into numbered Series which can contain up to 99 individual lessons each.
Below is a table showing those Series currently available online (there are many planned but not yet online). Each of the lines in this table may be clicked on to take you to a corresponding index page of items in that Series.
|Numbered Series and General Topics|
|0300||Topics Instant Immersion CD text files|
|0400||Pronunciation and Basic Intonation|
|0500||Spelling, Numbers, and Time|
|0600||Basic Word Types|
|0700||Greetings and Basic Conversation|
|0800||Basic Pepeke Types & Sentence Diagrams|
|0900||Basic Kāhulu (modifying words and phrases)|
|1200||Essential Cultural Knowledge|
|3300||Hawaiian Newspapers of the 1800s|
|3400||Books in the Hawaiian Language|
Each item has a code to help you identify its level and type; the code is highlighted below:
0401P Pronunciation Practice – Vowels
The codes start with four numbers which identify the Series in which the item belongs (shown above), as well as its level: lower numbers indicate more basic lessons than higher numbers. In the example above, 0401 would therefore be part of the 0400 Series on “Pronunciation and Basic Intonation” and its content would be more basic than 0409 or 0416 in the same Series.
The four numbers are followed by an alphabetical identifier which shows the category of the item. This will help you to see quickly what type of item it is (see below).
The alphabet letters used to identify each Category are shown below and are color-code grouped by method of instruction. [s2If is_user_logged_in()] If you wish to see a listing of all items available on ʻŌlelo Online organized by these Categories, please use the Coursework by Category index (members only).[/s2If]
|Asset Type Codes for Categories by Teaching Method|
|Audio, Text, and Video Lessons|
|Audio||A||Audio lessons where main lesson is taught through audio|
|Culture||C||Cultural understandings/lessons (text lessons)|
|Grammar||G||Grammar and structure lessons (text lessons)|
|Topics Ent||N||Topics Entertainment CD course texts|
|Video||V||Video lessons of all types|
|Book||B||Books or book excerpts; serialized newspaper legends|
|Exploration||E||Exploration of culture, concepts, understandings, etc|
|Mele||M||Mele (song or other poetry text)|
|Reference||R||Reference and “how-to”|
|Text||T||Texts or non-book excerpts; 1800s newspaper articles|
|Practice||P||Practice haʻawina exercises|
|Quiz||Q||Quizzes and other assessments|
|Story||S||Interactive Stories, Storylines, Interactive Fiction|
So using the same example as we used above, you can see that item 0401P is going to be some sort of “Practice” related to all of the other items labeled with the 0401 identifier in the 0400 Series about pronuncation and basic intonation.
- 0401V Pronunciation #1: The Alphabet (an instructional video)
- 0401P Pronunciation Practice: Vowels (a practice lesson)
- 0401Q Pronunciation Quiz: Alphabet (a quiz)
- 0401E How the Hawaiian Alphabet Was Made (an exploration)
Let’s try to put all of this together to get you started learning Hawaiian language.
- Use the site navigation menus to find the specific lessons or topic you want to start with (depending on your level). Go to either the Coursework by Series or Coursework by Category listing if you wish to browse the available items on ʻŌlelo Online.
- Total beginners should start with the 0400 Series all about pronunciation.
- Remember that within each numbered Series, there are individual lessons of many types. The item code, along with the title of the item, will help you indentify level, type, and topic of each lesson.
And over all, the main thing is to have fun while learning Hawaiian language!
We really appreciate your support to help keep this site running, secure, fast, and updated. When you join and log in as a member of ʻŌlelo Online, you have access to many more videos and audio files than non-members. Quizzes, interactive stories, and most downloads are also members-only. There is also a complete “Coursework Index” for members to use to quickly look through all of the lessons available on one page.
E mau ka ʻōlelo makuahine o ka ʻāina