Kamakawi Word of the Day

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.

ilo

• (n.) oar (of a boat)

Au utu ilo o eneta.
“The oars of the ship are broken.”

Notes: Yesterday’s word was iloa, which is right next to today’s word alphabetically, so I thought I’d throw it up. Nothing special about oars, I suppose—or this iku. The iku comprises a pair of oars. For boats. And rowing. Hooray!

The iku itself is still pretty simple (just four strokes), so I figure it works out well enough. By the way, for those who have never tried to row a small boat or canoe: not as easy as it looks! I was surprised. Also, it looks completely automatic, the rowing motion. It’s not. That’s something you’ve got to work at. Good workout, though.

nova

• (n.) manta ray

Au mawa nova ika!
“And the rays swim again!”

Notes: I was planning to do another word for today’s word of the day, but I happen to be watching the Rays and Yankees, and have been lucky enough to bare witness to one of the most incredible comebacks in pre-post season history. Down 7-0 pretty much the entire game, the Rays scored 6 runs in the 8th, and then, with two outs and two strikes in the bottom of the ninth, their season nearly over, their pinch hitter hit a home run to right to tie it. Just incredible. At the time of writing, the game is still going (it’s in the top of the tenth), so they may still lose it—and the Red Sox are still playing, so even if they lose, there’s still a slim chance they could get to the playoffs—but even so, what an incredible game! Baseball has done it again.

The Tampa Bay Rays used to be called the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Though a nova is not a devil ray, it’s in the ray family, so I figured it was close enough. Even though it’s curvy, I like this iku; kind of reminds me of the Queensrÿche logo.

hu’u

• (n.) heart
• (v.) to beat, to throb, to sound regularly
• (v.) to pulsate
• (adj.) great, big, huge, important, significant
• (suf.) chief, important, central

Tomi’u amo ti hu’u.
“It’s called a heart.”

Notes: The quote above is the title of a song by Depeche Mode, and, every so often, it’s fun to listen to a little Depeche Mode.

Well, the symposium is all finished. It was a terrific event! Concordia is a nice college with an active student body, and I met a host of wonderful people (also am coming home with a ton of movie recommendations). I’ve also experienced the very beginning of the cold weather here in Minnesota/North Dakota. I can only imagine what it must be like here in January. Glad I’m going back home to the Pacific Ocean when I am! But what a treat this was. I feel privileged to have been a part of it.

ObKamakawi, there’s a lot of crossover between Dothraki and Kamakawi (which is not something one would expect, I suppose). I can’t remember when, but some time ago I came up with the idea of turning hu’u, “heart”, into a suffix, and it attaches to a whole bunch of things to pick out, say, the leader of a group, or the most important part of a set (we saw one example yesterday). I really liked the idea, and so I borrowed it over into Dothraki, using qoy, “blood”, in place of “heart” (and the form itself, of course, was recommended to me by “blood rider”).

ukia

• (adv.) left (as in the left side of one’s body)
• (adj.) left
• (v.) to be to the left of something
• (n.) left side

Ukia o’opo ie pa.
“The coconut is to the left of the bowl.”

Notes: This is a companion to yesterday’s word of the day. Many languages derive the word for the left side of the body from something like “the weak side” or “the opposite of the right side”. Here I decided intentionally not to do that—pretty much just because. I’m not certain that there’s a language out there that does it this way (mainly because I haven’t looked up the words in many non-IE languages), but there probably is. I mean, somewhere in Papua New Guinea or Australia, one has to assume.

onu

• (adv.) right (as in the right side of one’s body)
• (adj.) right
• (v.) to be to the right of something
• (n.) right side

Ea. Laumi ei kopu onou. E laumi kopu neu.
“Yes. I’m lying on my right side. And my back.”

Notes: HAPPY CATURDAY!!!

Today I decided to go with a vintage, “Classic Keli” shot—a newspaper shot from an era and time that never existed:

That was taken early yesterday. And actually the style of this photo came about because it was just too dark (Keli’s fur doesn’t photograph well in low light!), and I was trying to lighten the photo up. And I was able to, but it looked terrible, so I just kept playing with it. Now it looks like I meant to do it!

Back when the direction of writing hadn’t been settled on in Kamakawi, you couldn’t tell what the iku for onou meant (and how it was pronounced) unless you knew which direction the writer had been writing in. Eventually when the final direction was settled upon (either left-to-right then top-to-bottom, or top-to-bottom and then left-to-right), the fixed form for onou was settled upon.

le’o

• (n.) egret

Eli ei ie le’o hu’u!
“I love the mighty egret!”

Notes: Man, oh, man! I can’t believe I haven’t done the word for egret yet! Not only is the iku one of my favorite iku of all time, but I have a bunch of cool egret pictures and egret stories (seriously I do)! I remember telling them; can’t believe I haven’t yet. Anyway, to get us started, here’s egret picture #1:

Look at that jaunty little bird! What a sport! This was one of the many egrets my wife and I made friends with in Jamaica. In the days to follow, I shall have more egret pictures and stories (and related words).

Anyway, since I said I would, here’s my (current) fantasy roster (starters first then bench):

• QB: Tony Romo (Dallas)
• RB: Jahvid Best (Detroit)
• RB: Ryan Grant (Green Bay)
• WR: Calvin Johnson (Detroit)
• WR: Roddy White (Atlanta)
• WR: DeSean Jackson (Philadelphia)
• TE: Kellen Winslow (Tampa Bay)
• K: David Akers (San Francisco)
• DST: San Diego Chargesr
• QB: Matthew Stafford (Detroit)
• RB: James Starks (Green Bay)
• RB: Daniel Thomas (Miami)
• WR: Davone Bess (Miami)
• WR: Greg Little (Cleveland)

For those who follow football, you can see I’m soft at running back—and I’ve also got too many Detroit players. I’d love to move Ryan Grant (since I don’t believe in him at all) and Tony Romo (since I hate him), but I’m thinking of moving Calvin Johnson for a decent starting wideout and a major upgrade at running back (just so I don’t have so many players on Detroit). I’m quite happy I got former Cal standouts DeSean Jackson and Jahvid Best, though (and I seriously considered picking up Marshawne Lynch). Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, this is a starting point, not the end point. We’ll see what deals I can make to improve my lot.

nukoa

• (n.) meat
• (v.) to have or be meat (said of an animal)
• (v.) to be edible, to be nutritious
• (adj.) edible, nutritious

Ka li ia i nukoa ke nevi i’i! Ae eli i ia!
“You have given me meat! I love you!”

Notes: HAPPY CATURDAY!!!

After an utterly inexplicable one week absence, Caturday has returned! And to make it for it I thought I’d do something special.

I’m not quite sure when it started, but Keli and I have a tradition. Some time after Erin has gone to sleep, she meows to let me know that her food dish is empty. If she needs wet food, I give it to her, and she goes up and sniffs it and then leaves it there (the expensive food we buy for her specially doesn’t excite her in the least). If she needs dry food, though, that’s a different story.

We store the dry food in an airtight tupperware container, and what she does is she meows and follows me to the container, I open it, it makes a loud sound, and she runs away (every time!). Then I give her one or two scoops of dry food, she goes over to the dry food, and then (and this is the strangest part): she thanks me.

Every time!

She goes up to her food bowl and puts her face in as if she’s about to eat, but then she stops, turns up her head to me and gives me a look (or, if she’s feeling especially grateful, gives me a little meow), and I pat her head and she starts eating.

Though filming this little ritual ought, by rights, to be a two person job, I’ve tried my best to get the whole thing on video myself. The results are below:

Unfortunately, she didn’t give me her darling little mmmrow this time, but her little head tilt is on camera. I’ll try to get another one where she makes her thank you noise in the future.

The Kamakawi are very much a meat-centric people. A meal isn’t a meal unless there’s a meat dish involved. Hence, something that’s “good” for you is derived from the word for “meat”. Meat is supposed to give you strength and vitality and renew your spirit; fruit and vegetables is for flavor and (for lack of a better word) regularity.

The iku for meat (in case you’re wondering. It looks right to me, but I know what I was basing it on, so you can let me know if you saw it before the following explanation) is a hunk of meat roasting on a spit (the ends of the rotating pole are on the right and left of the iku, and the line in the middle is the meat [the glyph has been simplified over time]). The Kamakawi do a lot of spit-roasting like this. Some day I’ll have to put up the vocabulary that surrounds such roasting. Some day soon…