See my review of Māmaka Kaiao at Amazon.com or read my review below. It is a good dictionary, but I did my best to be acerbic and supercilious. My review is sort of an open letter to the Hawaiian Lexicon Committee. They made a dumb editorial decision to arrange the Hawaiian-English section according to the Hawaiian alphabet. You might disagree with my commentary, but as Greg Gutfeld says "....if you disagree with me, then you sir are worse than Hitler."

My Review:
Māmaka Kaiao is a good dictionary and an important contribution by the Hawaiian Lexicon Committee to the Hawaiian language. It expands the vocabulary to include words for things and concepts for which previously there were no Hawaiian words. As stated in the book, it is "....to serve as a companion to the Hawaiian Dictionary by Pukui and Elbert [PE]." The PE dictionary is perhaps the most important reference of the Hawaiian language.

I have only one objection to this dictionary, their editorial decision to use Hawaiian alphabet order to alphabetize the Hawaiian to English section. The following is the standard order of the Hawaiian alphabet as used in the Māmaka Kaiao:

a e i o u h k l m n p w ‘ (‘okina)
with the rest of the English alphabet following in order
b c d f g j q r s t v x y z

The PE dictionary uses English alphabet order and gives no significant importance or weight to the ‘okina or the kahakō when alphabetizing. Why not use the convention established by the PE dictionary, since the Māmaka Kaiao is billed as a "companion" to the PE dictionary? Why use Hawaiian alphabetization? To be different and/or to be Hawaiian? Well, it is different, but there is nothing Hawaiian about it. There is a historical reason for the so called Hawaiian alphabet order, it was the order established in early Hawaiian instructional materials like the Hakalama chart. However the Hawaiian letters ARE in English order, they have only been grouped into the Hawaiian vowels first, in English alphabet order (a, e, i, o, u), followed by the Hawaiian consonants, in English alphabet order (h, k, l, m, n, p, w, ‘) with the ‘okina at the end. What a coincidence, eh?

I think it likely that the Hawaiian Lexicon Committee wanted to throw off their perceived shackles of servile bondage to un-Hawaiian, imperialistic western ways of arrangement and order and decided to be different, simply because they could. They could thumb their collective nose at western hegemony and demonstrate their independence by failing to kowtow to English convention. The Hawaiian Lexicon Committee provides no explanation in the book of their rational and I have no special insight into their thinking, but this seems to me as likely an explanation as any. Radical extremist, separatist ideology seems to have prevailed over good reasoning and common sense. Different can be good, I like different, it is one reason why I admire the Hawaiian language, but to be different just for the sake of being different with no other apparent good reason, seems to me pure lunacy. Why must we go through the difficulty of using a different alphabet order when everyone is familiar with their abc's?

This is a fine example of how being educated or knowledgeable doesn't mean you are always going to make intelligent decisions, even in areas of your own expertise. An awful decision made by committee and prehaps an example of a "cluster f--k." While the Māmaka Kaiao is a great contribution to the Hawaiian language, it does a tremendous disservice to its readers by requiring them to learn and adapt to a different alphabet order. It also does a disservice to THE HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE ITSELF by adding an extra burden to Hawaiian language students. With the Hawaiian language in a precarious position, struggling to survive in the modern world, you would think The Hawaiian Lexicon Committee and any other promoter or advocate of the Hawaiian language would strive to reduce or eliminate every unnecessary obstacle and barrier to the Hawaiian language for those who would like to learn it.

Pau Pele, pau manō!

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