Multilingual Memories: Learning Hawaiian with Uncle Byron

When my language skills became more developed as a child, a phrase that I would repeatedly (and perhaps excessively) say to my family was “humuhumu nukunuku āpuaʻa”. This is thanks to my Hawaiian-Chinese Uncle Byron, who is not actually my uncle by blood, but is definitely considered ʻohana*. This is the story of how Uncle Byron exposed me to another language that was not English (my native language) during the early years of my life.

I was fortunate enough to spend the first six months of my life in Honolulu, Hawaii, due to my father’s job assignment there. While I do not remember too much about my time there as an infant, I do remember Uncle Byron (as well as my father’s other Hawaiian colleagues) speaking to me and my sisters in Hawaiian. He bought us what eventually became my favourite childhood book; “Let’s Call Him Lau-wiliwili-humuhumu-nukunuku-nukunuku-āpuaʻa-ʻoiʻoi” by Tim Meyers. The book is intermixed with Hawaiian and English, and is about the journey of two different species of fish, the humuhumu nukunuku āpuaʻa (triggerfish) and lauwiliwilinukunukuʻoiʻoi (longnose butterflyfish), figuring out what to name their child. My sisters would pester Uncle Byron to read that book to us all the time. He happily obliged and read it in English and Hawaiian. When he needed a break from reading the book, he would play the ukulele and sing Hawaiian songs to us.

While I never continued to learn Hawaiian, I am forever grateful to Uncle Byron for piquing my interest to learn more than one language.

* ʻOhana means “family” in the Hawaiian language

This post was written by our Research Assistant, Seraphina, who works on the language mixes project, and from time to time, designs cute “lab swag”. Check out our Red-Dot Baby-Talk game to spot her kawaii food drawings!

Click here to read more of our Multilingual Memories!