Kamakawi Word of the Day

iloa

• (n.) shoulder

Te kanekoi ie iloa o ei!
“There’s a cat on my shoulder!”

Notes: It’s not Caturday yet, but I’ve got a cat picture for you! A friend of mine just rescued a very young kitten, and I got to visit him yesterday. I present to you Chapps:

Isn’t he adorable?! I want to grab him and put him in a little hot dog bun! It’d be big enough to serve as his bed!

A truly adorable little kitten. He was malnourished and suffering from fleas, but my friend cleaned him up and gave him food, and he’s on the mend. I expect we’ll see more of him here at the Kamakawi Word of the Day as time goes by.

The iku for iloa comprises the top and left sides of ko, you may notice. That’s why this iku gets classified as an iku’ume, as opposed to an ikuiku (though its suitability is, of course, based on the fact that it kind of looks like a shoulder and arm dangling).

futa

• (n.) knee, elbow
• (n.) a hard knot on a tree or log

Au pama futa o ia ima!
“Your elbows are hard!”

Notes: In Kamakawi, there’s one word for either your elbow or your knee (or an elbow or knee). The two things are basically the same: It’s a hard piece of bone that sticks out at a limb joint. And if you get kneed or elbowed in the face, it doesn’t really matter which you got hit by: it hurts!

The iku is the reversed version of ti, and was chosen because the darn thing really looks like a knee or elbow (in fact, the original ti is a stylized version of an arm).

uya

• (n.) wrist

Oku itu uyo o ei.
“My wrist doesn’t hurt.”

Notes: This is true. Ever since I got the new keyboard and mouse, my wrist problems have vanished. And now that I have my chair, my shoulder problems have vanished, too. It’s awesome!

This was one of the last fome I did. I got to a point (some five or six hundred iku in) that I decided, “Enough! No more glyphs!” But this one was just too easy and made too much sense not to add. And since its middle consonant is a glide, it meant I didn’t have to add it to the bisyllabic glyph chart, so adding it was no problem.

Now, though, I’m pretty sure I’m done. I may get tempted and add one or two later (especially when I finally create my font that doesn’t foolishly make use of bold and italics to get all the glyphs in one font), but for now, the five hundred or so fome I have are good enough for me.

awi

• (n.) fur (or animal hair)
• (adj.) furry
• (v.) to be furry

Ai ivi awi o ei i ia ai?
“Does my fur amuse you?”

Notes: HAPPY CATURDAY!!!

Every so often I’ll be upstairs, and Erin will call up to me to “take a look at our cat”. Whenever I do so, she’s always in some amusing or cute position. On this day, she was lounging on top of one of our chairs, happy as a cat:

Hey, this is another one of those words that uses the mysterious glyph au. It does its job.

So for those keeping track, both teams that I predicted would get to the World Series this year have been eliminated. So…yeah. The lesson here is not to put money on my baseball picks.

hoya

• (n.) throat

He ha’ala’i ue ea ima, he hoya!
“We must coexist, throat!”

Notes: Erin came home sick today (sore throat, etc.). I felt fine. Now, though, my throat is starting to feel a little…funny. I know what it has in mind, and I want no part of it. None of that nonsense! I haven’t been sick in ages (I can probably go back and find the last entry where I was sick. I haven’t been sick yet this year!).

No matter, though. I have important stuff to do. I will fight this off and will be no worse for the wear; just you wait. We shall coexist, throat! Mark my words—and fear my wrath!

olu

• (adj.) wide
• (v.) to be wide
• (n.) width
• (v.) to be open (said of mouths, eyes and similar things)
• (adj.) open

Témepa, olu lau o lea.
“Temba, his arms wide.”

Notes: That quote is from the famous (or infamous) Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Darmok”, where the alien Tamarians have a language that they apparently refuse to use—or understand. A truly puzzling one to think about as a language enthusiast.

Today’s iku is, I think, the real base for fala, the Kamakawi word for “father”, as opposed to opu, the Kamakawi word for “flea”. This one’s a true ikunoala (a straightforward blend of o and lu), and fala is the same glyphed simply flipped around.

And, of course, it’d make sense (perhaps?) for there to be a word for “father” before a word for “flea”, so it seems likelier that the glyph for fala had a notch added to it to produce opu, rather than the notch having been removed from opu to produce fala.

So, yes. I’m glad to have that figured out. On to the next mystery…

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”).

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…

tawa

• (n.) skull

I tawa pe.
“There’s a skull over there.”

Notes: For reasons unknown.

So hey, I know I said that yesterday’s was my 600th post, but apparently the scoreboard says something different. If you take a look at the ol’ dictionary, it says that today is my 600th dictionary post. Outside of dictionary posts, I have four announcements. That means that either today is my 600th post, or it was a few days back.

Well, whenever it is or was, it’s always a reason to celebrate! Hooray for my 600th dictionary post according to the count in the sidebar!

Today we have a morbid word: the word for “skull”. You may recognize the iku. If you do, be not afeared: it belongs to ono. This version is simply the determined version of the iku.

Man, it’s hot in this state! Not dry like Nevada, though. Man was that dry! How do people’s lips not just melt off there?!

foalo

• (n.) kidney

Titiva ia ie foalo o lea!
“Stab him in the kidney!”

Notes: Heh, heh… There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write in Kamakawi. But there it is.

Kidneys, I figure, should be basic terms, since we’ve got them inside us, and they’re pretty important. Although I’ve never seen my kidney I’ve seen plenty on chickens. I was horrified the first time I saw one in a piece of KFC. It looked like a brain. But then I remembered I’d actually eaten goat brain before (my parents and relatives never told me what it was. They just said it was carne de la cabeza. It was in a stew, so it wasn’t too noticeable… I wised up in later days, though), and figured, “Eh”.

Not that I eat the kidneys. Bleh! I just don’t freak out when I see them any longer.

Well. Not too much, anyway.