Kamakawi Word of the Day

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”).

uila

• (adj.) all of, every, whole, every bit of
• (det.) all

Uku uila poe fule ti ia i eli.
“All you need is love.”

Notes: Here’s a good shot of a surprise decoration at the wedding I mentioned yesterday:

The wedding was held on a dock behind a set of historic cottages (half of which was, I believe, a beachside inn), and as the unused half was open, there was a faux wall put up (the white wall in the photo). It would’ve been rather bare, though, so it was, I think, the groom’s sister that came up with this to drape over it, which I thought was a really nice touch (the two are Beatles’ fans [as are all of us (or as we all should be)]).

A couple notes on translation. First, I used the singular “you” there because…well, I needed to decide on one. The nice thing about having a lexeme (in this case, a pronoun) that doesn’t distinguish number is that it doesn’t matter if it’s singular or plural. I’m sure that as far as number and the second person pronoun in English goes, the only thing that ever gets discussed is the drawbacks; rarely do we discuss the advantages. Here I think it works out better in English.

As it is in the original, it’s unclear whether John Lennon is singing to one person, a group of people (e.g. the world), or using the generic (i.e. not “all you need is love” but “all one needs is love”). Leaving that unstated works better than stating it specifically—and this ambiguity is impossible in a language like Kamakawi, with number specified on second person pronouns.

The translation is more verbose than English (rather unusual for Kamakawi), mainly due to the nature of uila, which isn’t generally used as a noun. As such, it needs to modify something—a dummy noun—which in this case turns out to be uku.

One odd quirk of Kamakawi grammar that actually simplifies the translation slightly is the alignment of fule, which is a bit different from ordinary transitive verbs. With fule, the wanter or needer is the object (expressed by ti), and the wanted or needed entity is the subject. Since Kamakawi can only relativize on subjects, the verb in the embedded clause can be rendered ordinarily, rather than in the passive.

Regarding the iku, it’s a combination of ui (which I see I haven’t done yet. Oops!) and la. Guess I’d better do ui soon…

Oh, as an aside, “All You Need Is Love” is the song that Erin and I walked out to right after we were pronounced husband and wife.

u

• (part.) cooccurs with a plural subject that is identical to the previous subject in the discourse
• (art.) the plural definite article
• (art.) many

Ku hemata uei iu kuaki ae iolui kau.
“We spotted the ducks in the pond.”

Notes: I thought I’d do a short grammatical post today. We’ve already seen the singular counterpart to this (p)article. Basically it marks plurals. It’s used in several ways, though, including as a stand-alone subject status marker, and in conjunction with other subject status markers.

Though it’s quite simple in the romanization (or schematically), writing it is a different story. This iku is used in conjunction with the plural new status marker au, as well as with the same-subject status marker u. The iku for e is also used, but you don’t pronounce it—it’s just there in the orthography. The ordering, though, can sometimes be a little tricky, since it’s purely a formal element. Some writers put the e one first; some the u one; some leave the e out entirely. I’d imagine that eventually it’d disappear entirely (or the whole thing would morph into some other iku or series of iku).

As for the iku itself, it’s kind of a combination of the glyph for ka, no and to (without the top). The idea is that the plurality marker is used with duals, trials and plurals. That marking is only realized on pronouns (and optionally on nouns); the non-singular status is what’s important to the verbal system (and the definite marking of non-subject nouns).

At some point, this system will have to break down, and it will likely mean the end of the dual and trial. That will happen some day down the line, though; not now.

inivie

• (n.) star
• (adj.) shiny
• (v.) to be bright
• (nm.) a woman’s given name

…i noala i inoala poe ti’a'a kape eli ei ie inivie poe huita i emiemi ti matai.
“…to sing a song of when I loved the prettiest star.”

Notes: Wow. Now that is a convoluted and clunky translation. I wonder how natural languages with complex comparatives and superlative do this (simply, I mean)… That’s “…to sing a song about the time I loved the star that surpassed everyone in prettiness”. Nice thing about morphological comparatives/superlatives is they make nice adjectives.

This is the four-pointed Kamakawi star (mentioned here). It’s important that it has four points, as each one represents the four realms: the sea, the islands, the volcanos, and the sky. When I initially did the iku, it came out unbalanced, but I kind of like it that way. Gives it character.

For more information on the name, go here. I personally think it’s a great name—for a real child. I have no idea how an American school teacher would pronounce it, but it’d be fun to hear them try!

The lyric translated above comes from David Bowie’s song “The Prettiest Star”. That version is actually the original; this version is the version I heard first (on his greatest hits). Both are lovely.

neki

• (n.) hair
• (adj.) hairy, having hair
• (v.) to be hairy

A huita neki o ei i ika kipe ti fome kiko.
“My hair is shorter today than it was yesterday.”

Notes: Syntax on this one is rather complex. Literally, it is, “My hair surpasses its yesterday self in shortness today.” That’s how you form comparatives in Kamakawi. In fact, have I done a post on huita yet…? I see I have not. I’ve used it twice already, but I should definitely do a post on huita on its own, as it deserves explanation.

Anyway, the occasion for today’s example sentence is that I got my haircut (just a few hours ago, in fact). It feels good not to have all that hair on the back of my neck! After all, it’s summer, and summer is a time for cool breezes and sunshine—not for long, hot hair!

The iku for neki I classify as an ikuleyaka even though the “ground” determinative usually goes beneath the glyph. The reason it goes above should be obvious enough: It’s the hair! In fact, isn’t this glyph the exact opposite of another one (with the “ground” determinative on the bottom and the head on top)? I have no easy way to search this in my dictionary… I need a “looks like” search button.

eika

• (pron.) first person dual exclusive pronoun

Kau oinemu eika.
“We two are married.”

Notes: Erin and I, that is.

And now I’ve done about…25% of the pronouns in Kamakawi. Hooray!

Though this may look like a foma, it’s technically two iku. Here, the ka is just written very close to the ei customarily. Perhaps it’s on its way to becoming a foma! One can always dream…

hela

• (v.) to leap over something
• (n.) leaping

Takeaya ei i hela!
“I’m ready for leaping!”

Notes: HAPPY CATURDAY!!!

This is what Keli looks like when she’s about to jump:

She makes a very particular noise when she’s preparing to jump, and then another noise accompanying her jump. She’s quite the noisy cat (the pictures don’t do this justice). One of these days, I plan to record and catalog her various noises. She must have over twenty (a decent lexicon for a cat).

The iku for hela is actually the iku for he turned 45° to the right. This was done because the two lines that form a right angle and the midline extending towards the upper left-hand corner of the cell, when turned, form something resembling la. I actually didn’t realize that that’s what I’d done when I started writing this post, but it most definitely is. Ha! How ’bout that…

ine

• (v.) to do so, to do (pro-verb)

Oku kopuku ei i ia tou ae ine i ipe, he Teve.
“I can’t allow you to do that, Dave.”

Notes: After a one week hiatus, I’m happy to announce that, once again…

…iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit’s CATURDAY!!!

Of course, Keli was in good hands with Erin, but my kitty did miss me. I walked in the door, and poor Erin and she jumped up at once, and Erin accidentally bumped into her. Anyway, then we scooped her to give her hugs and pets, and she did this:

Yes: She got on top of my shoulder, climbed onto my back forcing me to stoop over, and then settled down there quite happily. (She began purring.) I figured it was her due for leaving her for several days. I stayed in that position for about four minutes until it got too exhausting and we had to pick her up.

Now Keli is sitting on her chair beside me quite happily and enjoying a little grooming session. Momentarily we will venture downstairs to eat some food. Too bad there isn’t a playoff game on now…

By the way, this iku started out life as an ikunoala, but then the stick that formed an elongated i on the right there kind of sidled down a bit and formed the characteristic diamond shape of ine. It’s stayed that way ever since.

ea ima

• (adv.) must, definitely

…a nemei uei ea ima.
“…and now we must depart.”

Notes: The Fourth Language Creation Conference has come to a close. Here’s a group shot of everyone but me (and a few others):

Heh, heh… They look so serious! (Or some of them.) I took that picture, which is why I’m not in it (I haven’t yet figured out the whole body splitting thing).

What can I say? LCC4 was fantastic. I wish more could have come, but that’s the way of these things. I hope one day to meet everyone I’ve come to know through conlanging.

eleumi

• (n.) everything, all

Itu eleumi o ei…
“My everything hurts…”

Notes: Man… Lost a tough game when we missed three last chance three point shots. I didn’t play too well, but I played hard, and my body’s talking to me (probably wouldn’t be if we’d won).

But hey, LCC4 is in four days! I know it’s going to be late in the US, but if you’re a night owl (or very early morning riser), check us out live here. You’ll be able to watch and/or listen live, and interact via IRC.