>"Mele Kalikimaka" for "Merry Christmas", ... To the best of my knowledge,
Hawaiian >syllables are always "open".
A question. Maori (closely related to Hawaiian) likewise has an open
syllable structure, and words are always written that way. Native speakers
insist that the language is spelt as it is sounded. But in fact, I have
sometimes heard sounds that "should" not be there, for example palatalised
consonants, voiced consonants and consonant clusters. My guess is that
these are a function of rapid speech, and that more careful speech would
restore the open syllable structure and simple plosives. An example is the
word Karaiti (="Christ"), often pronounced as /krait'/ (palatalised /t'/ at
the end). A much older example is the place name Tologa Bay, which should
be Toroka Bay.
So what's the situation in Hawaiian? Is it similar?
Peter