Hitting a snag with an assignment and thought I'd ask for help. The goal is to be able to pronounce Hawaiian words. Been successful with everything else from another post linked here but only issue is that if there is a space in the original word, it is intentional. So when I try the word 'E komo mai' the return value is eh- kohmoh meye. I put all the code I have used so far with the function calls to test. Any help would be appreciated.

# Variables
vowels = {'a': 'ah','e': 'eh','i': 'ee','o': 'oh','u': 'oo'
}vowelPairs = {'ai': 'eye','ae': 'eye','ao': 'ow','au': 'ow','ei': 'ay','eu': 'eh-oo','iu': 'ew','oi': 'oyo','ou': 'ow','ui': 'ooey','iw': 'v','ew': 'v'
}
# Not used but is part of it so is in dictionary for reference
constants = {'p': 'p','k': 'k','h': 'h','l': 'l','m': 'm','n': 'n'
}# Checks for valid characters in the input
def check(word):valid = ['p', 'k', 'h', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'w','a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u', ' ', '\'']for c in word:c = c.lower()if valid.count(c) == 0:print(c, ' is not a valid character.')return Falsereturn True# This function does the transition and pronunciation
def pronounce(word):chars = word.lower()print(len(chars))i = 0result = []while i < len(chars):char = chars[i]# print(char)if i < len(chars) - 1:print(char + chars[i + 1])pair = char + chars[i + 1]tr = vowelPairs.get(pair)if tr is None:tr = vowels.get(char)else:i = i + 1else:tr = vowels.get(char)if tr is not None and i < len(chars) - 1:tr = tr + '-'result.append(tr or char)i = i + 1wordResult = ''.join(result)print(wordResult)return wordResultcheck('E komo mai')
pronounce('E komo mai')

I first split the word where-ever there was a space. This allows you to handle them seperately. I then added a few more if-statements and logic to the process.

Here is what I came up with:

# Variables
vowels = {'a': 'ah','e': 'eh','i': 'ee','o': 'oh','u': 'oo'
}vowelPairs = {'ai': 'eye','ae': 'eye','ao': 'ow','au': 'ow','ei': 'ay','eu': 'eh-oo','iu': 'ew','oi': 'oyo','ou': 'ow','ui': 'ooey','iw': 'v','ew': 'v'
}
# Not used but is part of it so is in dictionary for reference
constants = {'p': 'p','k': 'k','h': 'h','l': 'l','m': 'm','n': 'n'
}# Checks for valid characters in the input
def check(word):valid = ['p', 'k', 'h', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'w','a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u', ' ', '\'']for c in word:c = c.lower()if valid.count(c) == 0:print(c, ' is not a valid character.')return Falsereturn Truedef soundout(part):lower_part = part.lower()result = ''part_len = len(lower_part)if part_len < 2:result = vowels.get(lower_part)else:for i, char in enumerate(lower_part):if constants.get(char):if (i-1) < 0:result += charelif vowels.get(lower_part[i-1]):result += "-" + charelse:if i < part_len-1:pair = char + lower_part[i+1]if vowelPairs.get(pair):result += vowelPairs.get(pair)elif vowels.get(char):result += vowels.get(char)elif vowels.get(char):if ((i-1) > -1) and vowels.get(lower_part[i-1]):passelse:result += vowels.get(char)return resultdef pronounce(word):wordResult = []parts = word.split(' ')for part in parts:wordResult.append(soundout(part))return(' '.join(wordResult).capitalize())# Eh koh-moh meye
check('E komo mai')
pronounce('E komo mai')

OUTPUT:

'Eh koh-moh meye'