The new eBook edition is an ideal resource for beginning speakers and students of the Hawaiian language or anyone interested in Hawaiian language history and culture. Illustrated with line drawings, it includes over 5,000 entries in Hawaiian and English and an additional 2,500 synonyms and related words, phrases,grammar notes, and thousands of example sentences in both Hawaiian and English that illustrate practical and cultural uses of the language.

Hawaiian is a very demanding language for most people. Even if your interest only goes to understanding chants and songs and translating the names of streets and surf spots you cant get by on what people just happen to say they know. You need to look it up and you'll want to look it up in several places to get the whole picture.

That would be the No. 1 reason for picking up a copy of the eBook edition "Illustrated Hawaiian Dictionary" by Kahikahealani Wight illustrated by Robin Yoko Racoma.

The standard Hawaiian Dictionary by Mary Kawena Pukui and Samuel H. Elbert is an excellent book. You should certainly have that in your library but at around $33 its quite an investment.

Still purely as a dictionary time itself has created and in a sense also revealed the weakness of the Pukui-Elbert book. To get modern terminology and words for foreign objects and places you need to add Mamaka Kaiao by the Hawaiian Lexicon Committee.

There you have one of the weaknesses and paradoxically one of the strengths of Wight's Illustrated Hawaiian Dictionary. That's because in this new book the availability of contemporary-word translations is not always a two-way street.

In the English-to-Hawaiian section for example television is translated as kiwi with macrons over both vowels. In the Hawaiian-to-English section no such word is listed. Still that's the direction most of us will usually need to go with modern terms so it becomes the second big reason to buy this dictionary.

Since this is an illustrated eBook it would be inappropriate not to mention the illustrations. What's more the drawings by Racoma are the No. 3 reason to buy the book. The pictures are nicely done. I can't say that they really help with the definitions in the way that the few illustrations in a Columbia or Websters might but they may help attract youthful attention. That's enough to ask of them.

If you don't have a Hawaiian dictionary start with this one. It is very affordable and will serve you well for a long time. You can graduate to multiple dictionaries later. By then you'll want to replace your worn hard copy of Wight's Illustrated Hawaiian Dictionary with this eBook version.