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The ʻokina (Hawaiian pronunciation: [ʔoˈkinɐ]) is the letter that transcribes the glottal stop consonant in Hawaiian. It does not have distinct uppercase and lowercase forms, and is represented electronically by the modifier letter turned comma: ʻ.

A phonemic glottal stop exists in many other Polynesian languages as well; these are usually written by a similar apostrophe-like letter.

Names

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	The ʻokina 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 an apostrophe in modern publications, recognized by Samoan scholars and the wider community.^[1] Use of the apostrophe and macron 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 for fakamonga)	Throat maker	Typeset by the same character (ʻ) as the ʻokina, 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 or ʻakairo ʻamata	"hamza" or "hamza mark"	Not used in daily writing. The Bible and governmental bibliographies use the ʻokina.
Wallisian	fakamoga	By throat	Not used in daily writing. Various graphic forms are used.

Appearance

In many fonts, the symbol for the ʻokina looks identical to the symbol for the curved single opening quotation mark. In others (like Linux Libertine) it's a slightly different size, either larger or smaller, as seen here:

In this phrase there is one ʻokina before the Ō and another one before the last i. These are slightly smaller than the quotation marks in the first line and slightly larger in the second.

Case

The ʻokina is treated as a separate letter in the Hawaiian alphabet. It is unicameral—that is, it does not have separate uppercase (capital or majuscule) and lowercase (small or minuscule) forms—unlike the other letters, all of which are basic Latin letters. For words that begin with an ʻokina, capitalization rules affect the next letter instead: for instance, at the beginning of a sentence, the name of the letter is written "ʻOkina", with a capital O.

Geographic names in the United States

The United States Board on Geographic Names lists relevant place names both with and without the ʻokina and kahakō (macron) in the Geographic Names Information System. Colloquially and formally, the forms have long been used interchangeably.^[6]

Computer encoding

Apostrophes and quotation marks

In the ASCII character set, the ʻokina is typically represented by the apostrophe character ('), ASCII value 39 in decimal and 27 in hexadecimal. This character is typically rendered as a straight typewriter apostrophe, lacking the curve of the ʻokina proper. In some fonts, the ASCII apostrophe is rendered as a right single quotation mark, which is an even less satisfactory glyph for the ʻokina—essentially a 180° rotation of the correct shape.

Many other 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 a punctuation mark, which may cause incorrect behaviour in automated text processing. Additionally, the left single quotation mark is represented in some typefaces by a mirrored "9" glyph, rather than a "6", which is unsuitable for the ʻokina.

Unicode

In the Unicode standard, the ʻokina is encoded as U+02BB ʻ MODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA (ʻ). It can be rendered in HTML by the entity ʻ (or in hexadecimal form ʻ).^[3]

Although this letter was introduced in Unicode 1.1 (1993), lack of support for this character prevented easy and universal use for many years. As of 2008^[update], OS X, Microsoft Windows and Linux-based computers and all new major smartphones have no problem with the glyph, and it is no longer a problem in Internet Explorer 7 as it was in previous versions. U+02BB should be the value used in encoding new data when the expected use of the data permits.

References

^ Hunkin, Galumalemana Afeleti (2009). Gagana Samoa: A Samoan Language Coursebook. University of Hawaii Press. p. xiii. ISBN 978-0-8248-3131-8. Retrieved 17 July 2010.
^ "Samoa to restore use of apostrophes and macrons". SamoaNews.com. 25 November 2012.
^ ^a ^b Unicode Standard 5.1 Archived December 17, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
^ "Learn Rapa Nui language". Easter Island Travel. Retrieved 10 September 2024.
^ Kieviet, Paulus (2016-12-12). A Grammar of Rapa Nui. Studies in Diversity Linguistics. Berlin: Language Science Press. p. 19. ISBN 9783946234753. (41st page of the downloadable PDF file)
^ U.S. Board on Geographic Names: Collection and Dissemination of Indigenous Names (United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, Twenty-third Session Vienna, 28 March – 4 April 2006, Working Paper No. 82), S. 3: "An example of this has been the addition of the glottal stop (okina) and macron (kahako) to placenames of Hawaiian origin, which prior to 1995 had always been omitted. The BGN staff, under the direction and guidance of the Hawaii State Geographic Names Authority, has been restoring systemically these marks to each Hawaiian name listed in GNIS."