Re: USAGE: English, Masculine, Feminine

Roger wrote:

<<>and the near inexplicable [?n], in a shortening of the phrase,
> "Ha'ina 'ia mai ana ka puana", which sometimes comes out as "Hai'na mai
> ka puana"!
You have the advantage of me, in having actually studied and presumably
heard Hawaiian. :-)) What does the phrase mean, and do they really drop out
2 whole words???>>

Well, now I'm afraid I have to reveal all the smoke and mirrors behind this
statement.

First of all, this is a phrase that is primarily reserved for music and
poetry.   As
such, it sometimes needs to be scrunched a bit to fit a meter.   Second,
glottal
stops can disappear intervocalically in various contexts, one of which is in
song.
Third, "ana" is "optional" (kind of like the "are" in "What are you doing?",
which
can be understood if you say, "What you doing?", but it's pretty obvious that
the word is being elided; it's not a different structure).   Fourth, "Haina
mai ka
puana" is a standard variant of the phrase.   (That would be without the
glottal
stop.)   So all that remains to be explained is how the glottal stop somehow
reappeared before the /n/, and the answer is that it's probably just an
effect of
the singing.   So it's not all that mysterious.

Oh, and the phrase is used either before the moral of a song/poem (given at
the
end), or before the final repetition of the refrain.   If I try to translate
it word-for-
word into English, it comes out as nonsense, because there's no subject.
All the
translations I've seen of it, then, don't sound any good in English (e.g.,
"To repeat
the refrain of a song").   What I surmise it actually might come out to in
sensible
English is something like...hmm...   Let's try it with a song.   How about "I
Want to
Hold Your Hand".   The refrain in that is, "I wanna hold your hand".   Before
the last
chorus, there's another verse (the first with the roles reversed).   Now
imagine that
instead of singing the first verse again, they said something like, "And now,
to
repeat, that which I have said, let me, say to you, 'I wanna hold your
hand'".   That
first part up to the word "said" would be just like "Ha'ina 'ia mai ana ka
puana".

I've been very long-winded lately...   I'll try to fix that.

-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

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