"Close the windows."

Translation: E pani i nā puka aniani.

[Riceburns]

Can someone please help me understand why "E pani ʻoe i nā puka aniani" is not also correct?

[AlanAbonyi]

it should be an accepted alternative answer. The exercises are wildly inconsistent. The very next example is to translate: E wehe ʻoe i ka puka.

[Riceburns]

Thank you for your response, AlanAbonyi. I double checked with my native Hawaiian speaker friend and she agrees.

[GeraldMath4]

Having been marked "Incorrect" for leaving "ʻoe" out of a translation earlier, I couldn't figure out why that word wasn't offered for the current translation. "Wildly inconsistent," as AlanAbonyi suggests, must be the right answer.

[HudqeO2Y]

I agree----especially since all of the other commands have included the word for you and some of the comments have said that the 'oe could be included or left out as it is understood.

[Maui_Bartlett]

"E pani ʻoe i nā puka aniani" should be an accepted answer now.

[MacKinzieRob]

I wish DLHawaiian would not give the whole sentence when only a single word is selected.

[Sheknitsstuff]

Dropped subject? ( I understand that this is something that is done, it just feels abrupt, as some sentences in this section contain implicit subjects, and some are dropped.)

[ahau.3]

Subjects are only used emphatically in the imperative, just like in English.

[ShirleyJSe]

What does the 'i' signify?

[Maui_Bartlett]

What Gerald said is 100% pololei, that is, correct. The "i" used in this sentence comes immediately before the object being acted on by the action word "pani". So, if someone said to you "E pani i ka puka aniani", you would know that they wanted you to close the window. "E pani ka puka aniani", without the "i", makes the window the subject of the sentence. It is the thing doing the action. Written that way, it seems more like the window should be closing something, but what that something might be is not clear.

All that said, it's important to note that because the word "pani" ends with an "i" sound, in speech the "i" word that comes before "ka puka aniani" tends to disappear, since an ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi speaker would smoothly slide from the "i" at the end of "pani" into the next "i" word without pause.

[ShirleyJSe]

Thank you so much for making that clear and understandable.

[GeraldMath4]

No pause, but still a long vowel, right? I even feel myself accenting it a bit, as normally happens to long vowels.

[GeraldMath4]

It introduces the grammatical object, the words that name the thing operated on.