To type the upper case vowels with kahakō above them (Ā Ē Ī Ō Ū), press and hold the Option and Shift keys together and then type the vowel. To type the lower case vowels with kahakō above them (ā ē ī ō ū), press and hold the Option key and then type the vowel.If your ‘okina does not appear to be the same font as the rest of your text, you probably have chosen one that does not have the ‘okina in this location, so please choose another. Many fonts, but not all, have the ‘okina and kahakō. Choose one of the fonts that support the Hawaiian characters, such as Helvetica, Lucida Grande, or Times.Select a program that supports Unicode, such as any version of Microsoft Word 2004 or later, TextEdit, or Mail.Choose the “Hawaiian” keyboard that is shows (do not chose the Papa Pihi “HI” if you see it there). Close the System Preferences window and you will see a new keyboard menu on the menu bar, near the system clock.Select the Hawaiian keyboard, click on the Add button, and you will be returned to the previous screen.In the next panel that appears, select Input Sources, then click on the “+” (plus) sign below the list of keyboards that are currently activated.Click on the Keyboard Preferences… button.Click on the “+” (plus) sign below this window, and a list of available languages will be displayed.

Go to the “System Preferences”, choose the Languages and Regions panel, and look under the Preferred Languages window on the left side.However, if you are simply creating word processing documents (particularly if they are going to be shared), web pages and use Hawaiian in social media sites, please consider abandoning the “HI” fonts and going with Unicode. If you have a large collection of these fonts for desktop publishing purposes, it is OK to use them. I highly recommend that people stop using the old Papa Pihi “HI” that I developed while at Hale Kuamo‘o and the fonts associated with it (all of those fonts begin with “HI”). The graphic below shows a number of built-in OS X fonts displaying the Hawaiian language. Later versions of Macintosh OS X included localized date and time strings as well as Hawaiian sorting routines. This is a significant development for speakers of Hawaiian language, as this now allows users to type the ‘okina and kahakō without the installation of specialized fonts. Read a press release regarding this development here. Included in that release was native, system-level support for Hawaiian, in the form of a Hawaiian keyboard and inclusion of the ‘okina and kahakō in a number of the fonts that ship with OS 10.2. On August 24, 2002, Apple Computer shipped OS 10.2, also known as “Jaguar.” Yes, it’s been nearly 20 years.

How to type hawaiian okina