Hobbies And Interests
Luau Spelling Game
This is a word game that can be played at Hawaiian luaus and with Hawaiian words as well. For this game, players get three lives. All the players sit in a circle and the game proceeds around the circle from the first player who starts a word with its first letter. As the game proceeds, other players have to continue to each add a single letter to the forming word. A player can be challenged if other players think the letter he added is unusable. In this case, the player can defend his selection by announcing the word he was thinking of at the time. If he doesn't name a word, he loses one of his lives. However, if he can name a word, he takes a life away from whoever challenged him. When using Hawaiian words in the game, it is best to have an impartial judge with a good knowledge of the language since some words can be unfamiliar to some participants. This enables players to have someone they can consult in the event of a challenge to find out if it is a true Hawaiian word. Any player who loses all three lives is out of the game.
Hawaiian Word-Learning Game
Another good party game, this one starts with a bunch of Hawaiian words and their translations into their English counterparts. All participants get to look at a list with the original Hawaiian words and their translations for a couple of minutes. The host then gathers up the lists from everyone and gives each player a pen and only the Hawaiian words that are varied from their original order. Players have one minute to write down the English translations. Whoever has the most correct translations wins.
Hawaiian Pictionary
For this game you'll need an easel with a large pad of paper. You'll also need different pieces of loose paper that will contain the names of Hawaiian places and items. These could include names like Diamond Head or words like pineapple, coconut and ukulele. Two opposing teams toss a coin to see who starts then each side takes their turn. A player from the starting team takes one of the pieces of paper and after seeing the word, draws on the easel to give clues to his teammates. The other players on his team have two minutes to guess the answer and win a point. If they can't get the answer within that time the opposing team gets the point. Play continues this way until a team reaches10 points and wins.
Hulo!
Hulo! is a game that provides a good way to learn Hawaiian words. It is basically a crossword that focuses on Hawaii. You can know very few or a lot of words and still have fun. The look of the game is taken from the appearance of old Hawaiian newspapers, which are called nupepa. In old Hawaii, "from 1834 to 1948, nearly one hundred different Hawaiian language nupepa published approximately 125,000 pages of news, political dialogue, social commentary, history, cultural practices and literature -- both local and foreign," according to Kamehameha Publishing. These variant sources provide players with a way to experience much of the language from old Hawaii.