Project-General

ORTHOGRAPHY

VOWEL: There are only five vowel sounds in Wai ma'a

VOWEL	EXAMPLE WORDS	IPA
a	aku ‘me’	/a/
e	ehe ‘to talk’	/e/
i	nihi ‘tooth’	/i/
o	oto ‘to tie’	/o/
u	uhu ‘to pick’(fruit)	/u/

LONG VOWELS: Long vowels are represented by doubling vowel symbols. Note that there are only five vowel sounds there fore the pronunciation of the vowel symbols are always the same as above.

Long Vowel	Example Words	IPA
aa	waa ‘mouth’	/a:/
ee	klee ‘to swim’	/e:/
ii	tii ‘to go there’	/i:/
oo	loolo ‘done’	/o:/
uu	guu ‘to spin’	/u:/

RE DUPLICATION: There are limitations in Wai ma'a lexicon, therefore we use reduplication of words. One of the situation where a word is use twice is when something is happening or being doing repeatedly. Here are some example words

nai 'slow' nai-nai 'repeatedly slow'
wele'e 'a little bit' wele'e-wele'e 'repeatedly small'

there is also partial reduplication for example

diha ana 'small/tiny' didiha ana 'to describe small things'
p'are oli 'big' p'ar-p'are oli 'to describe big things'

SOUNDS: When in a word, two vowels symbols are proceeded or repeated and it is writen without using any accent [ ' ], the word contains long vowel. However, the two vowels are separated by an accent, the sounding of the word is different. The accent run a similar function as Hawaiian OKINA.

Wowel + '	Example words	IPA
a’a	ma’a 'empty'	/aʔa/
e’e	ale'e 'big'	/eʔe/
a’i	na'i 'stomach'	/aʔi/
o’o	to’o 'true'	/oʔo/
u’u	tu’u 'thick'	/uʔu/

REDUPLICATION

WAI MA'A Language Documentation Program
Spring 2010