ʻOkina

Okina is in the Hawaiian language, the name for the voiceless glottal plosive. He is represented in the Scriptures by the character itself is also called Okina. It is an upside down apostrophe ( and similar respects to German English -closing or opening single quote ). In contrast to the latter, it protrudes into fonts that grant it its own design, not upward above the cap height also.

The character is also used in the case of Uzbek language, but in a different function.

Since the different pronunciation of Hawaiian words leads to different meanings, the spelling with Okina and Kahakō is an essential condition for use Hawaiian names and terms.

The use of the Okina in the case is closely associated with the revival of the Hawaiian since the end of the fifties of the 20th century. Impact of this revival also across the state also. So were renamed by the Senate of the United States National Park in Hawaii in the Hawaiian National Park Language Correction Act of 2000, the case with diacritics Okina and Kahakō became the subject of a federal law. The competent federal authority on Geographical Names United States Board on Geographic Names changed since 1995, its long-standing practice and turned to the use of the Hawaiian spelling in Geographic Names Information System.

Glottal stop in Polynesian languages

The voiceless glottal plosive is also available in many other Polynesian especially languages ​​under various names:

Coding and display of Polynesian Glottisschlags

Old conventions

In pure ASCII the glottal stop is sometimes indicated by the apostrophe ('), the 39 and 27 in the decimal system has the ASCII value in hexadecimal. In most fonts, this is represented as a straight typewriter apostrophe, as it is also used in data processing, and is set as Unicode characters. In some older fonts, however, especially those based in Unix derivatives and related systems and MS- DOS, the right single quotes ( English typography ) is issued, which shall not be used as Okina. It's just a supposedly better, but actually incorrect method ( incorrectly referred to as "back- quote character" ), which in some older fonts a left single quote ( English for pure ASCII text U 0060 Gravis (`) to use typography ) yields similar sign. In the most recent font types, it is emphasized tilted to the left and has therefore unsuitable. It results in alphabetical sorting of word lists also mean that "` " is usually after " z " classified, rather than ignoring the Okina, as would be appropriate in almost all Polynesian languages ​​. However, it is still useful as a fallback if words are to be entered into a database with limited character in order to keep the characters from the apostrophe distinguishable.

New standard and transition problem

The official Unicode value for the glottal stop is the Unicode character U 02 BB modifier letter turned comma () in Unicode Spacing Modifier Letters block that appears in the HTML coding ( or hexadecimal as ).

However, the lack of support prevented this character in older fonts as well as the large amount of old data in conjunction with cost and time required for conversion, the rapid introduction and extensive use of the character. In the meantime, however, the sign does not cause more problems.

Keyboard Input

On keyboards with the occupancy T2 accordance with the revised German standard DIN 2137:2012-06 the glottal stop (ie the Unicode character U 02 BB) entered using the key combination Alt , ( comma). This possibility results from the design requirement for the T2 - occupancy that all characters for all Latin written primary official languages ​​must be enterable, and that the Tongan (as opposed to a Hawaiian primary official language of the state) uses the same characters as fakaua.

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