"Mele Kalikimaka" is a Hawaiian-themed Christmas song written in 1949 by Robert Alex Anderson. The song takes its title from the Hawaiian phrase, "Mele Kalikimaka", meaning "Merry Christmas". The phrase is borrowed directly from English but since Hawaiian has a different phonological system—Hawaiian does not have the /r/ or /s/ of English and its phonotactic constraints do not permit consonants at the end of syllables or consonant clusters—"Merry Christmas" becomes "Mele Kalikimaka".