ʻŌlelo Noʻeau are Hawaiian proverbs that often offer wisdom for a person to live by. To connect more with culture and history, as well as to enrich perspective in general, I'll post inspirational ʻŌlelo Noʻeau here! The ones chosen are intended to apply particularly to your learning of the Hawaiian language in hopes to keep up your motivation, and below each one posted here will be a breakdown of the vocabulary and grammar involved!
He maunu ʻekaʻeka:
- He sentence structure ("It is a [noun]") - Maunu = Bait
- ʻekaʻeka = Dirty
Pāpaʻi ka iʻa e hoʻi ai:
- Understood He sentence structure, matching previous clause
- Pāpaʻi = Crab
- iʻa = Fish; more generally: any creature in the sea
- hoʻi = To return
- e [verb] ai = here, a verb phrase acting as an adjective describing the noun iʻa. E __ ai are Simple Present Tense and Future Tense markers in situations like these (i.e., when the verb is not the main verb of the sentence), and can translate as a relative clause. Meaning ka iʻa e hoʻi ai can translate to "the fish that returns" (or "the fish that will return") or "the returning fish."
All together:
(If) A bait is dirty; (A) crab is the fish that will return.