Kamakawi Word of the Day

pa’a

• (n.) mallet, hammer, club
• (n.) drumstick, mallet for a large drum or gong

Li ia i ipe pa’a ko.
“Bring that hammer here.”

Notes: I gots a little smashing to do.

After designing this iku, I thought, “Naaah! Too simple!” But I went with it, and it’s stuck. And it is a good design, in principle; it’s not inconceivable that another culture would come up with it. Seems useful for those great big drums—and also for cracking open crabs and mussels and other shellfish.

ui

• (v.) to join, to conjoin
• (n.) joining, conjoining, coming together
• (n.) joint (body part)
• (phon.) glyph for the sequence ui

He ui eya i peaka!
“Let’s conjoin them!”

Notes: I’ve classified today’s word as an ikuiku, but I’m not sure about the classification. It derives from a figure that looks pretty much like this one, but it started out abstract. It’s, essentially, an abstract representation of joining (perhaps originally a drawing of a knot, though it no longer means “knot”). So the thing looks like what it’s supposed to look like, but it’s not very…picture-y. Aside from throwing up my hands and calling it an ikunima’u, though, all I can do is classify it an ikuiku.

hoku

• (n.) elephant

Fumi ipe nili ti hoku.
“That field is good for elephants.”

Notes: You know what? I just decided one day that the Kamakawi Islands would have elephants. Native elephant populations, at that. How would a series of tiny islands support a population of elephants (even little miniature elephants, as the Kamakawi elephants are)? I have no idea. And despite all, I don’t care. I liked the idea of elephants wandering through the jungles and even splashing around in the waves on the beaches. I like to picture Kamakawi children riding on little baby elephants. It’d be adorable. And that was justification enough, way back when I came up with the Kamakawi elephant. And then I came up with this kickass iku to go with it.

So, there you have it. Elephants that exist on tiny little islands. Many elephants. Trumpeting and crashing and splashing about. Miniature elephants, by our standards (perhaps no bigger than a horse, at the biggest). So it was, and so it shall be. Forever.

The end.

Edit: As you may have read in my last post, the Kamakawi Word of the Day took a one-day hiatus to protest SOPA. Unfortunately, if you tuned in during the first hour or so of the 24 hours of the 18th, you wouldn’t have noticed anything different, since I made a counting error (something I do often). Eh. It’s the thought that counts…?

powi

• (n.) music

Oku hala’i ei io powi tou oku.
“I can’t live without music.”

Notes: The Kamakawi word for “music” is an homage to the greatest musician of the 20th century: David Bowie. (That’s right: I’m saying it! If anyone comments, “But what about Elvis?”, so help me…)

The iku for “music” gives a clue as to the real derivation of the word—that is, it’s onomatopoeic. The concept derives from drumming, as the beat is the backbone of all music. I kind of think of it as the spine, and the rest of the instrumentation branches off from the spine (and from those bones the muscles, the tissue, etc.).

Oh, and by the way, today is David Bowie’s birthday. He’s now 65, which means that 66 is the new old: if you’re 65 or younger, you’re now young. And so it shall go from here on out!

tone

• (n.) ladle

Neo ia ie tone, funa!
“Use a ladle, you oaf!”

Notes: Sometimes a word is born simply because I have a good idea of the way the iku will work. So we have mate, novu and fa’e, all of which rely on the “open box” shape seen in a lot of Kamakawi iku acting as a tureen of sorts. In this one, then, you have the ladle going into the tureen, and thus: tone.

I didn’t give much thought to how a ladle would work its way into Kamakawi culture. I’m pretty sure, though, that if you have soup, you’ll find a way to get a ladle. Ladles just make sense, after all—at least if you have big pots or bowls. And why wouldn’t you? Those are useful! I mean, who makes a stew for one?

Ha, ha. That’s a good name for a blog for single cooks: Stew for One. If you use it, the royalty checks come straight me.

kaino

• (n.) Hawaiian goose (nene)
• (nm.) a man’s given name

Ka ni’u ipe kaino!
“That goose bit me!”

Notes: And geese do bite. You be careful around geese! Those birds don’t mess around. If only I’d had a camera the day that goose tried to run me down… You think I’m joking, but it happened! My wife was there; she’ll attest to it!

The iku for kaino is one of my favorites, on account of how goose-ish it looks. It’s certainly a proud goose. I can see a language deriving the word from “pride” from the word for “goose”. Then you could make reference to a person’s goose-ishness.

For more information about the name Kaino, go here.

hipa

• (n.) needle

Li ia i ipe hipa e nevi i’i.
“Give me that needle.”

Notes: The earliest Kamakawi needles were made of bone. They were rather long and a hole bored into the end of it. In the iku above, the top swoosh (going to the left) is the thread, and the vertical line is intended to be fabric. The entire thing, though, actually looks like a stylized version of hi, giving the reader a clue to the word’s pronunciation.

mote

• (n.) heliotrope

Meya mote!
“The heliotrope is blooming!”

Notes: Hey, when it comes to flowers, heliotrope ain’t half bad. Here’s a non-copyrighted picture of heliotrope to look at:

Not bad! The iku for “heliotrope” is supposed to look like heliotrope. It might be a bit much, but, honestly, have you seen Egyptian hieroglyphic?! Take a look at how crazy some of these glyphs are (Unicode chart go)! Kamakawi’s iku are tame by comparison.

io

• (conj.) but
• (prep.) sans, except, without, excluding
• (phon.) glyph for the sequence io

Ka olomo i palei io nea.
“I walked home without her.”

Notes: Kind of a sad sentence not directly indicative of anything. We saw today’s iku yesterday, but there it meant “dove”. Today’s is this kind of conjunction/preposition, and it’s also used for the phonological sequence io. The iku is a combination of…

Uh oh.

Hang on a minute. What the heck is the iku about?! It doesn’t look like a combination of i and o. It doesn’t really look like a dove… What the heck is it?

Dang. Unless something comes back to me before I hit the first comma in this sentence, I think I’m going to have to classify this iku an ikunima’u. How about that.

Update: Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh snap! You are not going to believe what I just found! This is the iku that the modern Kamakawi iku for io derives from (I found it!):

Look at that! It’s an honest-to-goodness dove! A real, no-foolin’ dove! So the modern iku, then (in the real history of the language), is my stylized representation of that dove. I ain’t never smoked a thing in my life, but…what was I smoking?!

Oh wait. Actually, I kind of see it… I took the complex image there and tried to render it with as few strokes as possible. You can do it with two. So the important part, then, was the dent of the wings on the top, and then you just carry the line down under to form most of the body. Then the tail is done with one stroke and turned slightly (as it probably would over the years). Huh. How about that! Mystery solved.

fau

• (n.) petrified tree

Ipe i fau.
“That’s a petrified tree.”

Notes: Okay, I know there must be some reason this word exists. I remember I really liked the idea for the iku, but it couldn’t have just been that. I must’ve come across it in a dictionary somewhere… Either that or I was reading up on petrified trees—something. I know I wouldn’t have made a basic term for “petrified tree”—and an ikuiku to boot—without some very clear, very real excuse.

That’s my excuse. For the time being.