Kamakawi Word of the Day

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…

latu

• (v.) to suck in (air or some other substance), to inhale
• (n.) sucking in
• (adj.) sucked up

Ka latu lea i levea lona ima!
“He drank too much salt water!”

Notes: This is a difficult word to describe to those who haven’t spent a lot of time looking at other natlangs without the conversation devolving into smut. Those who have (like most conlangers) know that a word like this is actually quite common in the world’s languages, and it isn’t always associated with sexual activity. In fact, there’s actually two words for this in Kamakawi: One that has to do specifically with air, and this one, which applies to everything else (but also includes air). If the Kamakawi had cigarettes, this is the verb they’d use.

As for the iku, it actually uses the box from tu (making this iku partly phonetic) and makes it into a mouth inside the boxish Kamakawi head you see in a lot of glyphs (e.g. huva, the opposite of this word). In this way it’s pretty solidly an iku’ui (I know there aren’t many, comparatively speaking).

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.

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…?

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!

hupe

• (n.) marine toad
• (n.) any kind of toad

Fuleke ia ti’i, he hupe.
“I miss you, toad.”

Notes: The toad is a peculiar animal. They’ve always looked to me like little rocks. When I was in kindergarten, I tried to capture and domesticate a toad. It didn’t go well. I wasn’t sure what he ate, so I gave him little pieces of hot dog. I’m not sure if he knew they were supposed to be food. The toad died in a relatively short amount of time. I feel pretty awful about now. I didn’t know what I was doing, but, crucially, didn’t know that I didn’t know. I assumed I could take care of it. I believe television led me to believe this. Nevertheless, I shall bear the terrible burden for the rest of my days. I apologize, Mr. Toad (for that was, indeed, the name that I gave him). I did wrong by you, but I never made the same mistake again, and have done what little I could to ensure that the mistake isn’t replicated by others (and that includes this blog post). It’s nice to know that your troubles are at an end.

ipu

• (n.) slug

Oku! Hava ei i ipu okuoku!
“No! I would never eat a slug!”

Notes: Snail shells are about the only thing cool about a snail, which makes slugs the antithesis of…of something. Blech!

Today’s iku always reminds me of yesterday’s. The two look rather similar. As far back as you go they’re pretty similar, in fact (both being built off similar iku and combining with the same iku in the same way). I think both iku are kind of ugly. What can you do, though? They can’t all be birds of paradise.

Not that have anything against slugs, specifically. In fact the club we resurrected at Berkeley was called SLUG. It stood for the Society of Linguistics Undergraduates. And we even put together a symposium. That’s where I did my first ever presentation on conlanging. Know what I used? Overheads. Actual overheads. And they were awesome. In fact, that’s one of my wife and I’s oldest stories. She was the time keeper, and I’d mentioned that I was going last during our symposium so I could take up as much time as I wanted. She had signs that told us how much time we had left, and after I got the STOP sign (and I was still going), she pulled up some other signs she made just for me (signs that said things like “STOP! STOP! STOP!” and “PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP!”). I was so amused, that I got distracted, and pretty soon we were all waiting to see how many signs she had and what they said. Good times…

You know, we had a mascot too that I drew. It was a slug with a Superman cape that was attached via a gold chain that was fastened by a great big schwa that dangled over his chest (or thorax [or bodily mass...?]). In fact, can we get a shot of that guy? Let’s see… Ah! Here he is:

Not the best drawing, but you can see his cape, his schwa, and his sardonic expression. I fear the Society of Linguistics Undergraduates is no more, but it had died before and been resurrected. Should the need ever arise, the Mighty SLUG will rise again from the ashes, like a fiery…slug. So be not sad! His schwa will live on forever.

to’o

• (n.) swarm (of insects)
• (v.) to swarm (said of insects)

Awei! I to’o o tata!
“Ack! It’s a swarm of flies!”

Notes: Bleh. A swarm of insects has to be the worst thing in the world—especially small flying ones when you’re biking. Bleh!

So, in reality, this post is coming after three of the weekend’s playoff games have already finished. Even so, though, I think it’s about time to do my NFL playoff predictions. Here they are:

NFC
Wild Card Round

• (5) Atlanta Falcons def. (4) New York Giants 31-24
• (3) New Orleans Saints def. (6) Detroit Lions 45-38

Divisional Round

• (1) Green Bay Packers def. (5) Atlanta Falcons 42-17
• (2) San Francisco 49ers def. (3) New Orleans Saints 23-21

NFC Championship

• (1) Green Bay Packers def. (2) San Francisco 49ers 34-20

AFC
Wild Card Round

• (5) Pittsburgh Steelers def. (4) Denver Broncos 53-9
• (6) Cincinnati Bengals def. (3) Houston Texans 27-19

Divisional Round

• (1) New England Patriots def. (6) Cincinnati Bengals 37-27
• (2) Baltimore Ravens def. (5) Pittsburgh Steelers 31-27

AFC Championship

• (2) Baltimore Ravens def. (1) New England Patriots 17-14 (OT)

Super Bowl XLV

• (1) Green Bay Packers def. (2) Baltimore Ravens 45-26

You know who the Ravens and Steelers remind me of? The Titans and Jaguars from 1999. The Jaguars lost three games all year: all to the Titans. The Steelers lost a couple others, but I call them dropping three to the Ravens this year, and that’ll catapult the Ravens to the Super Bowl. Now, on paper, it’s hard to pick anyone but the Packers over the Patriots, but I hate those cheaters!

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.

oto

• (v.) to growl
• (n.) growl
• (n.) growling

Ka mata kaneko i’i ke oto.
“The cat saw me and growled.”

Notes: I forget if I talked about this before, but even though Kamakawi has some coordinating conjunctions (“and”, “but”), for the most part, they’re not used (they usually end up getting used for emphasis). The reason is that the subject status markers pretty much handle all coordination. Since ke above indicates that the subject of the following clause is the same as the previous—and also indicates that a new clause is coming—there’s no need for “and”. And there’s also no ambiguity (e.g. “The man saw him and he ran”).

Today’s word, suggested by yesterday’s, has an iku that’s pretty easy to figure out. It’s an ikunoala and a straight-up combination of o and to.