In this blog post, I compiled a list of free fonts available in Canva that not only include Hawaiian diacritical marks such as kahakō but, most importantly, the letter ʻokina.
Canva is a free-to-use online graphic design tool. It has thousands of fonts available. Yet, it can be time-consuming to research the perfect font.
Once you find the perfect font, Hawaiian Diacritical marks such as ʻokina or kahakō are not working. They are just plain sans-serif font and do not match the one that you chose. Sounds familiar?
It can be frustrating and it is tempting to exclude the ʻokina and kahakō. Technology also still need to catch up with many restricting those characters.
ka ʻokina
ʻokina is a consonant in the Hawaiian Alphabet and is similar to the sound between the syllables of "oh-oh." . Many fonts do not include it. It looks similar to an apostrophe, but its shape is like an inverted comma. Not including an ʻokina can change the meaning of a word, as "kou" means "your" and "koʻu" means "my."
Ke kahakō
Kahakō is a line over a vowel that tells readers to pronounce a letter with a longer vowel sound. Like the ʻokina, a missing kahakō can change the meaning of the word. For example, "kane" is a fungal skin disease and "kāne" means man.
Use wehewehe.org to double-check the correct spelling or diacritical marks placement.
After searching through many fonts, here are the ones with Hawaiian diacritical marks and ʻokina. Most fonts listed are available in Canva under a free account.
Unfortunately, script, brush or fancier fonts are limited but there is a handful of fun ones to use.
