Kamakawi Word of the Day

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.

payu

• (v.) to show, to display to
• (n.) displaying, showing

Ai fulele ia ae mata ie palei li’i ai? Ale ko! He male payu ei i ia!
“You want to see my home? Come on in! I’ll show it to you!”

Notes: For a present, we got something in a brown paper bag. We set it on the ground, and Keli had found a new little home:

I suspected she would exit the bag if I approached her, so I took out my camera and started taking pictures from a distance, and continued to do so as I edged closer. This was the best of the bunch (since, indeed, she did exit the bag when I got closer).

Today’s word is built off the iku for moko (“eight”), but in this case, it’s actually serving the function of an ikunoala. See, the glyph for pa is an upside-down triangle, and the glyph for iu is a right-side-up triangle. By setting one above the other, you get payu. Of course, it couldn’t be identical to moko, so to disambiguate the pair, a notch was added to the top.

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.

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.

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…

oka

• (v.) to be dull
• (adj.) dull

A oka tiva.
“The knife is dull.”

Notes: As with the example sentence, this is only “dull” as in “not sharp”, not “dull” as in “boring”.

I wanted to do something different with this iku. I had no ideas for it (couldn’t be an ikunoala), so I thought I’d play it by ear. Then I came up with this. And then I decided to stick with it. I still don’t get it…

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.

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.

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…?