Editor's Corner

Aloha!

It’s been a long time since I’ve gone on vacation, but those of you who have spent years with me know that I love to share what I’ve learned when I get home from a trip. This year, we traveled in the United States, to Kauai, Hawaii.

Hawaii is a special place for many reasons, but one is that native Hawaiians have a different language from English. While policies in America’s past aimed to assimilate the Indigenous people by teaching them English, there has been a resurgence of teaching the Hawaiian language to kids in school.

Here is just a short list of common Hawaiian words: Glossary of Common Hawaiian Vocabulary. Though many of the people we met said they were not fluent in Hawaiian, the Indigenous tour guides had great vocabularies. For example, the guide we had at the old sugarcane plantation knew the Hawaiian fruit plant names, the captain of the catamaran knew the mountain and seaside place names, the gardener knew the names of the plants, etc.

What I’m here to talk about today, though, are some of the specific things I learned while on my trip. A few things are about the culture, some about the words I learned, and then there are photos.

I think this might take a few “episodes” of Editor’s Corner. I hope you can enjoy the ride!

I’ll do something common and brief today: the shaka sign. This giant shaka photo is from a roundabout near our hotel:

From Wikipedia: The shaka sign, sometimes known as "hang loose" is a gesture with friendly intent often associated with Hawaii and surf culture. It consists of extending the thumb and smallest finger while holding the three middle fingers curled, and gesturing in salutation while presenting the front or back of the hand; the wrist may be rotated back and forth for emphasis.

This should not be confused with your favorite devil rock hand gesture “the sign of the horns,” which is not about hanging loose.

I’ll have more for you next time, from the different adventures we went on.

Until then, mahalo*!

*thanks, gratitude, respect…what a great word!

Kara Church | Technical Editor, Advisory | Technical Publications

Pronouns: she/her | Call via Teams | jackhenry.com

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