Is It Your First Time Dualing This? I'll Be Gentle

(Apologies for the lack of macrons) 

There are many reasons to dislike the Green Owl, God of All of Languages, into which I was tricked in a contract (although it is merely a year, not seven or a billion), but some of his methodology is legitimate. Many linguistics concepts are challenging for learners, especially American monoglots or nigh-monoglots, and the American education system is designed to eliminate love of learning despite the best efforts of teachers. Most people do not think grammar is fun.

One of the concepts that Hawaiian ('Olelo Hawai'i) possesses and English lacks is that of the dual. The dual, as its name suggests, indicates exactly two. Anglo-Saxon, also known as Old English, had a dual which was lost between the Norman Conquest and the reemergence of the English language as a form of written communication, so the difficulty of the concept arises from unfamiliarity alone. The etymology of the dual in Hawaiian is transparently the number two (ua < lua), thereby demonstrating the dual can develop as well as disappear.

Another concept that Hawaiian possesses and English lack is that of clusivity. Old English does not use this, nor do Greek or Latin. Clusivity is a concept limited to the first person pronoun, I or me or my, There are two forms: inclusive and exclusive. The inclusive form includes the person addressed, thee or thou or you; the exclusive excludes the person addressed, but includes somebody else. The nature of clusitivy mandates the exclusion of the singular. This leaves the plural, and the dual in languages which have it - which Hawaiian does.

Both duality and clusivity are challenging concepts, and the beginning of any course bears a strong possibilty that the learner may drop out faced with too much terminology. The Green Owl, however, has found a solution. The introduction of two dual and two plural forms for "we" would be too confusing for English speakers. The initial forms presented in the language games are both inclusive, although this term is never used and only the dual emphasizes the inclusion of you (but only one of you) and me. The contrast, therefore, is between kakou, meaning "all of us," and kaua, meaning "you and me," an elegant streamlining of two non-intuitive concepts in a foreign tongue.