Kamakawi Word of the Day

leke

• (n.) olona, hemp (used to make fabric, rope, etc.)
• (adj.) made from olona

Li ia i ipe levu leke e nevi i’i.
“Give me that olona rag.”

Notes: This is, basically, hemp that’s used to make stuff. I always get a kick out of this iku, though. I call it “Old Tooth-Head”. Also kind of reminds me of those things that pump oil. When I was a kid, I would call them army ants.

I’ve made my piece with the Patriots winning this Super Bowl. I’m prepared to approach with a zen-like calm. Instead, I will focus my attention on replays of the Puppy Bowl. Nothing warms the heart (or the feet, come to think of it) more than adorable puppies. I shall think on them while enduring an awful Patriots victory.

nina

• (v.) to be sweet-smelling, to be fragrant
• (n.) fragrance (only pleasant)
• (adj.) fragrant

Itilili heka! E nina!
“The air is sweet! And fragrant!”

Notes: A quote from one of my all time favorite movies. Today’s iku doesn’t look too bad for an ikunoala. I’m actually surprised I don’t use this word more.

Today I was having a discussion about terms for “smell” (in English). For me, to say something “smells” is almost always bad (unless it’s followed immediately by a “like” phrase), and the word “stink” is always bad. This isn’t the case, I guess, for a lot of people. For example, lots of people say that garlic “stinks”—people that eat garlic. To me, that’s like saying that a rose is flashy—or even that a rose stinks. The description just doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. If something stinks, you do not eat it. PERIOD. Not only that, no one could possibly eat it. It’s not a matter of taste. Garlic has an aroma that carries and is distinctive, but so do jasmines. And if you say one stinks, then so does the other.

I swear, people be crazy!

mike

• (n.) albatross

Oloko Keli ti mike.
“Keli is dreaming of an albatross.”

Notes: HAPPY CATURDAY!!!

Here’s the picture:

What a big bushy tail she has!

Anyway, regarding this entry, here’s how I imagine the conversation will go in the future:

Person: So you had a Kamakawi Word of the Day blog?

Me: Yeah.

Person: And Kamakawi has a word for “albatross”?

Me: Yeah.

Person: And you had an entry that featured Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”?

Me: Yeah.

Person: So was that the entry for “albatross”?

Me: No.

Person: …

Yeah. Oops. And now “albatross” is relegated to “afterthought” status. So it goes…

tako

• (n.) vein

Mata ei iu tako e’i epelu o ia tou.
“I can see the veins under your skin.”

Notes: This is only for the types of veins that are in your body, not something like a vein of ore in a rock. The main body of the iku is ko, and there’s a ta inside of it (kind of like the vein is inside the body).

I have always been very, very uncomfortable imagining, talking about, or thinking about veins. Internal organs? No problem. Veins? Very troubling. Troubling in the same way as discussing a vasectomy is troubling. (Guys will know what I’m talking about.) Just an icky, icky feeling pulses its way through the entire fiber of my being. Makes me shudder.

So. Let us drop this topic and never speak of it again.

upo

• (v.) to feel queasy
• (adj.) queasy
• (n.) queasiness

Ae upo i’i…
“The queasiness is inside me…”

Notes: That’s a bit of a different way of saying what, essentially, the verb by itself expresses.

Today’s iku is a simple ikunoala (u inside of po), but it rather neatly expresses how I feel when I feel nauseous. Basically, I feel like I have a great big W in my stomach. I don’t know if I can describe the feeling any better than that.

pela

• (n.) sibling

Ipe ioku pela oi’i!
“That is not my sibling!”

Notes: Today’s word means “sibling” in the technical sense. It’s just a basic word, but it feels much more formal, nowadays. As a result it’s generally only used when one sibling is mad at the other (e.g. “He may be my sibling, but he is not my brother!”). The iku is built off of pe, and it has the little la spearhead coming off of the little stick down at the top.

ite

• (n.) shortness of breath
• (v.) to pant, to wheeze
• (adj.) panting, wheezing

Ka ite ei neika kepe kupe.
“I wheezed when I was young.”

Notes: Because I had asthma when I was young. I was lucky enough to grow out of it, so I came to understand that running, for example, could actually be fun. Indeed, I came to love it! Feels so nice to be able to run from one place to another.

I could say more about this iku or this word, but I’ve got a hungry cat! I need to go brush my teeth so we can go downstairs and I can give her her dry food. She loves her dry food.

mola

• (n.) rosemary

Havava ei i mola!
“I like rosemary!”

Notes: Got a couple of stray thoughts that I want to tack down here before I forget them.

First, this iku is built off mo, which is one of my favorites. Today my wife told me that a day or two ago she informed me that Portlandia is streaming on Netflix. I’d been wanting to watch it, since I’d heard good things, and was quite pleased with the first two episodes (we’ll have to wait to see the rest). Today’s iku reminded me of the “Put a Bird On It” sketch.

Anyway, then thinking about this post, I thought about how this iku is a part of the mo series. What this means is that it’s one of the iku that’s built off of mo. That’s really how I think of Kamakawi iku (or at least those that are built off other iku), but I have no way of searching them (e.g. if I think of an iku, and know it’s basic shape, I can’t go to my computer and type in, “Search for the one that kind of looks like novu, but upside-down”).

That’s when a thought occurred to me. Once I finish putting up all the foma and retire this blog, I can go back through all the entries and just add tags. I’ll probably want to come up with a native Kamakawi word for “series”, but then I can tag, for example, every foma that’s built off of mo, and, since every iku will be here on the blog, I can search them! Hooray!

This is also what’s stood in the way of encoding Kamakawi’s script in the Conlang Unicode Registry. I’d reserved a block, but then I had to come up with official names for each glyph and decide where it would be assigned. It was only afterwards I realized what a monumental task that would be, given the size of the Kamakawi orthography, and the design.

But! Maybe if I actually get everything up here and get it all tagged, it’ll be easier to do.

Oh, and I also plan to go and do the audio for every example sentence (might as well). Some day…

nevi

• (v.) to give
• (n.) giver
• (n.) giving
• (n.) beneficence, charity
• (adj.) given
• (nm.) a man or woman’s given name

A nevi ei i ia ti kaneko.
“I give you a cat.”

Notes: Sometimes things just fall neatly into place.

Today is, of course Caturday (HAPPY CATURDAY!!!). It also happens to be my birthday. As those who follow the blog know, I’ve been trying, recently, to focus on foma to try to finish presenting the rather large orthography of Kamakawi. Could there be some way to take care of all those things at once…?

Remembering that, for some crazy reason, I hadn’t yet done an entry for the word nevi (one of the oldest and most frequently-used Kamakawi words there is—and one of my favorites), I took a look at the entry, and found as a part of the entry the example sentence shown above.

And then looking through the pictures on my phone, I found this as one my most recent Keli pictures:

Happy birthday to one and all! Your present is a cat!

The iku for nevi is built off the glyph for ne, with a little fi made out of the descending bill of the ne seagull. I didn’t think much of this iku at first (it looks slanted), but it’s grown on me. Now when I think of the concept “give”, I think of nevi.

Grammatically, the example sentence is not the usual way you’ll see nevi used. Usually nevi is used serially, with some sort of object from a previous clause taken over as the assumed “object” of nevi. In reality, the grammatical object of nevi is the recipient.

That said, in rare situations (can’t think of a context where this would be the natural form of expression), you can introduce the theme/patient of the verb nevi by means of the preposition ti (the leftover argument marker). And I’m sure that’s why I included the sample sentence I included in my dictionary/grammar document. Why it included cats? Well, they’re pretty outstanding, by all accounts. Had to give something.

hule

• (n.) o’opu naniha

Iwe levea ti hule.
“The water is full of o’opu naniha.”

Notes: The o’opu naniha is a very small little fish endemic to Hawai‘i, and it has a little cousin that swims the waters of the Kamakawi Islands. They’re nice fish, as far as little fish go.

Believe it or not, this iku is an ikunoala: a kind of blend of hu and le. Unlike most ikunoala, it’s not really built off any one iku. Instead, the two just kind of morphed together over the years. And now we have what we have here.

It seems to me that this would be a great, iconic name for a baseball team. You know how some baseball teams end up with these names that don’t seem fierce at all (the Cubs, the Mudhens, etc.)? I can see a team called the Hule in the Kamakawi baseball league. (Of course, they probably wouldn’t have a league of their own. They’d probably be a part of a main land minor league and have an irregular schedule due to the distance. But that’s another story…)

Update: No Kamakawi Word of the Day tomorrow—but this time not because I’m lazy! Tomorrow I’ll be going off the internet in protest of SOPA. Hope your Wednesday is a happy one.

Edit: LOL Isn’t that just like me? I scheduled the post specifically so it would avoid the whole SOPA protest. I kept on thinking, “Okay, schedule it for the next day”, and so I moved it one day ahead. Unfortunately, the day I moved it ahead of was…yesterday, the 17th (which, at the time, was “today”). So…yeah. Oops!