Theʻokina (Hawaiian pronunciation:[ʔoˈkinɐ]) is the letter that transcribes theglottal stop consonant inHawaiian. It doesnot have distinct uppercase and lowercase forms, and is represented electronically by themodifier letter turned comma:ʻ.
Aphonemic glottal stop existsin many other Polynesian languages as well; these are usually written by a similar apostrophe-like letter.
Following are the names of the glottal stop consonant in various Polynesian languages, and notes on how they are represented in text.
| Language | Vernacular name | Literal meaning | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hawaiian | ʻokina | Separator; cutting; breaking | Theʻokina is often replaced in computer publications by the grave accent (`), the left single quotation mark (‘), or the apostrophe ('), especially when the correct typographical mark (ʻ) is not available. |
| Samoan | koma liliu | "Inverted comma"—inverted (liliu) comma (koma) | Often replaced by anapostrophe in modern publications, recognized by Samoan scholars and the wider community.[1] Use of the apostrophe andmacron diacritics in Samoan words was readopted by the Ministry of Education in 2012 after having been abandoned in the 1960s.[2] |
| Tahitian | ʻeta | ʻetaʻeta = to harden | |
| Tongan | fakauʻa (honorific forfakamonga) | Throat maker | Typeset by the same character (ʻ) as theʻokina, according to the Unicode standard.[3] |
| Rapa Nui | ꞌeꞌe[4] | In electronic texts tends to be written with a (always lower-case)saltillo⟨ꞌ⟩.[5] | |
| Cook Islands Māori | ʻamata orʻakairo ʻamata | "hamza" or "hamza mark" | Not commonly used in daily writing. The 2014 Revised New Testament Bible models the use of the Saltillo character to mark the glottal stop. Theʻokina is also used in some contemporary writing. |
| Wallisian | fakamoga | By throat | Not used in daily writing. Various graphic forms are used. |
In many typefaces, the symbol for the ʻokina looks identical to the symbol for thecurved single opening quotation mark. In others (likeLinux Libertine) it is a slightly different size, either larger or smaller, as seen in the adjacent image.
The phrase illustrated is surrounded by single opening and closingquotation marks. There is one ʻokina before theŌ and another one before the lasti. These are slightly smaller than the quotation marks in the first line and slightly larger in the second.
The ʻokina is treated as a separate letter in theHawaiian alphabet. It is used only before vowels: ʻa, ʻe, ʻi, ʻo, ʻu. It isunicameral—that is, it does not have separateuppercase (capital or majuscule) andlowercase (small or minuscule) forms—unlike the other letters, all of which arebasic Latin letters. For words that begin with an ʻokina,capitalization rules affect the vowel: for instance, at the beginning of a sentence, the name of the letter is written "ʻOkina", with a capitalO.
TheUnited States Board on Geographic Names lists relevant place names both with and without the ʻokina andkahakō (macron) in theGeographic Names Information System. Colloquially and formally, the forms have long been used interchangeably.[6]
In the (limited)ASCII character set, the ʻokina was typically represented by theapostrophe character ('), conventionally a straighttypewriter apostrophe, thus lacking the curve of the ʻokina proper. In somecomputer fonts, the ASCII apostrophe is rendered as a right singlequotation mark, which is an even less satisfactory glyph for the ʻokina—essentially a 180° rotation of the correct shape.
Many subsequent "extended ASCII" character sets expanded on the overloaded ASCII apostrophe, providing distinct characters for the left and right single quotation marks. The left single quotation mark has been used as an acceptable approximation to the ʻokina, though it still has problems: the ʻokina is a letter, not apunctuation mark, which may cause incorrect behaviour in automated text processing. Additionally, the left single quotation mark is represented in some typefaces by a glyph shaped like a mirrored miniature9 (rather than like a6), and thus unsuitable for the ʻokina.
In theUnicode standard, the ʻokina is encoded asU+02BB ʻMODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA (ʻ). It can be rendered inHTML by the entityʻ (or in hexadecimal formʻ).[3]
Although this letter was introduced in Unicode 1.1 (1993), lack of technical support for this character prevented its easy and universal use for many years. Since about 2008,OS X,Microsoft Windows andLinux-based computers and all new major smartphones have had no problem with correctly rendering the glyph. Consequently, U+02BB should be the value used in encoding new data when the expected use of the data permits.