GPS Lady Tries to Speak Hawaiian!

Credit: DepositPhotos.com/Shaun Wilkinson

We had a lot of fun with our GPS on this last trip!  Let’s just say that the “very mainland-American” GPS voice had a little trouble with some of the Hawaiian names, much to our delight, amusement, and sometimes confusion!   To help you with the imagery of the voice, imagine Paula Deen trying to say the Hawaiian street names without at all trying to sound Hawaiian!  (Nothing against you Paula….I loved your restaurant!).  Our favorite was when “Paula” would instruct us to turn onto Aay-la-moh-na Boulevard (Ala Moana Blvd.).  We just about cracked up every time that we left the hotel!

There were some other names that weren’t as memorable as that one.  (I really should have been writing them down!).  So, while I don’t have a list of the funny things that “Paula” was telling us to do, I just thought that I’d make a list of some of the funny mispronunciations many of my friends have made.  Here it goes!

Hawaiian Word	Haole Pronunciation	Correct Pronunciation
Ala Moana	Aay-la-moh-na	Allah Moh-Ahna
Like Like Highway	Like Like Highway	Lee-Kay Lee-Kay Highway
Piikoi Street	Pee-Koi Street	Pee-ee-koi Street
Kalakaua	Kay-la-ka-oo-ah	Cal-ah-cow-ah
Humuhumunukunukuapua’a	(Yeah…most don’t even try!)	Humu-Humu-Nuku-Nuku-Apu-a-a

Humuhumunukunukuapua’a is my favorite word ever, by the way!  I’ve made sure to teach it to my kids when they started talking.  Much fun!

One more thing…If you want to have a little laugh, and you have an Android phone, go to the Navigator App and get directions to anywhere in Hawaii.  It will actually calculate a route!  When I did this from Houston, TX, it gave me the strangest directions.  It had me drive all the way up to the north-western tip of Washington State, and then it drew a straight line to the northern coast of Hawaii.  I was kind of hoping that instead it would have driven me to the airport to take a plane.  (That would make more sense).  …or maybe at least say that it was impossible to drive there.  When I looked at the turn-by-turn directions, I searched for the point where it leaves the mainland (from Washington State).  This is what it said:

“Kayak across the Pacific Ocean

Continue for 2756 mi

Entering Hawaii”

Hey! Google has a sense of humor!  Good for them!

Well, I’m really sorry that I waited so long to post this, because I was really looking forward to telling these jokes!  I hope that you enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed experiencing them!

Malama pono.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: I had originally planned on adding a series of posts related to my last visit to the islands.  However, it seems that work caught up with me and didn’t let go.  Now that I’m back on the case, I’ll be playing catch-up!  Stay tuned for some more posts regarding my latest visit to Hawaii.