The sound of silence

English speakers may feel their throat close when pronouncing words like “kitten,” “mitten,” and “bitten” — a momentary silence called a glottal stop. But how would one pronounce a glottal stop at the beginning of a word? Such is the case in Hawaiian, which writes the sound with the consonant “‘okina.”

Roon et al. assessed the acoustic properties of Hawaiian among 13 proficient adults to analyze differences between words that did and did not begin with ‘okina. They found that ‘okina pronunciation correlated with speaking the following vowel at a higher amplitude and higher pitch, while an absent or unpronounced ‘okina correlated with a more gradual rise in volume.

“The Hawaiian language is not just a different language spoken with all the properties of English,” said author Lisa Davidson. “That can sometimes be a concern in situations like language revitalization or second language acquisition.”

The authors traveled to Hilo, Hawai’i to work with Hawaiian language teachers and graduate students who speak the language daily — not a guaranteed find in the state due to the language’s near-extinction in the early 20^th century. Participants recorded spoken language tasks, including describing pictures, reading sentences, and reading real and made-up words.

The researchers analyzed the amplitude and frequency of the recordings and fed them to a model, which sorted utterances into two groups based on the acoustic properties of the first vowel. The model correctly identified words that began with ‘okina about 75% of the time.

These results demonstrate that modern Hawaiian speakers have adopted one of the language’s subtleties, a boon for 50 years of revitalization efforts.

“It’s a success story,” said author Kevin Roon.

Source: “Acoustic properties of utterance-initial glottal stop in Hawaiian,” by Kevin D. Roon, Lisa Davidson, and ‘Ōiwi Parker Jones, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (2026). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0043708 .