"Aunty Lani is the birth mother of my cousin."

Translation: ʻO ʻAnakē Lani ka lūauʻi makuahine o koʻu hoa hānau.

[BarbaraLea954887]

Why does lūau'i preceed makuahine?
What is the grammar rule in this instance?

[Maui_Bartlett]

"Lūauʻi makuahine" together means "biological/birth mother". The use of lūauʻi is an exception to the usual ordering of descriptive word coming after "noun".

[Artikyulet]

Argh! This isn't specific to this particular exercise, but I'm NEVER going to get the o/a distinction right if Duolingo keeps forgiving my mistakes. It's especially frustrating to figure out whether someone's stepmother takes a different form of possession than a birth mother. Sheesh. Maybe a long tooltip on how alienable possession relates to family terminology?

[Maui_Bartlett]

Aloha e Artikyulet! Sorry for the confusion! There's a bug in the Duolingo system that we've been trying to get staff to correct, which allows "a" in place of "o" as a "single character typo", even though that is not the behavior we would like.

To clear things up a little: someone's relationship to an older familial generation (or generations) is generally o-class (this includes parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, ancestors, etc.), so one would use "o" for both stepmother and birth mother. "O" is also generally used for people within the same familial generation as yourself (siblings, cousins). A person's relationship to younger familiar generations (children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, etc.) is a-class, as are relationships with spouses and their siblings, and romantic partners in general.

[MacKinzieRob]

Still yet but... some 'tips' screens like other DL courses would be a BIG +

[Artikyulet]

Mahalo! groans with relief I know that's covered earlier in the course, but that was many, many weeks ago. Thank you so much for the clarification, e Maui.

[LEg1Dr]

This answer should have been correct.