Kamakawi Word of the Day

lope

• (n.) hibiscus arnottianus

A male owa ei i lope i malalele
“I will plant hibiscus in my garden.”

Notes: This particular flower refers to what in Hawaiian is called koki‘o ke‘oke‘o. It’s a white flower which, in typical hibiscus fashion, has a little spout coming out the middle. It’s a gorgeous flower, and it brightens up any garden. For some reason, hibiscuses (hibisci…?) always relax me. They remind me of being in Hawai‘i. As does this particular brand of sunscreen. I should stock up on that…

ma’o

• (n.) lavender

Ikiki o ma’o!
“Morning of lavender!”

Notes: Lavender is also an incredible flower. Check out this field in Japan which is covered with it:

The iku should look slightly familiar. It’s basically the same as the iku for male, but without the midline. I think both of them pass the ikunoala test, though. (Translation: I’m not going back and changing the category of male, on account of my unaccountable laziness.)

Also, in case you haven’t heard it elsewhere, the 2011 Smiley Award went to Matt Pearson’s Okuna! It’s a great language, and if you have some time, I recommend you give it a look.

mote

• (n.) heliotrope

Meya mote!
“The heliotrope is blooming!”

Notes: Hey, when it comes to flowers, heliotrope ain’t half bad. Here’s a non-copyrighted picture of heliotrope to look at:

Not bad! The iku for “heliotrope” is supposed to look like heliotrope. It might be a bit much, but, honestly, have you seen Egyptian hieroglyphic?! Take a look at how crazy some of these glyphs are (Unicode chart go)! Kamakawi’s iku are tame by comparison.

fau

• (n.) petrified tree

Ipe i fau.
“That’s a petrified tree.”

Notes: Okay, I know there must be some reason this word exists. I remember I really liked the idea for the iku, but it couldn’t have just been that. I must’ve come across it in a dictionary somewhere… Either that or I was reading up on petrified trees—something. I know I wouldn’t have made a basic term for “petrified tree”—and an ikuiku to boot—without some very clear, very real excuse.

That’s my excuse. For the time being.

teva

• (n.) delta (of a river)

Palei li’i ie teva.
“My home is in the delta.”

Notes: This is a song by Muddy Waters I quite enjoy. You can hear it here.

The iku for teva does, indeed, look like a stylized delta, but it’s based on the iku for kalio, which means “sea anemone”. The iku for teva is simply a rotated version of kalio. This is the second iku we’ve seen that’s a modified version of kalio. The first one was mena, which is the word for “scallop”.

opaopa

• (v.) to burrow
• (n.) burrowing
• (adj.) burrowing

Ai opaopa ei ie iko himola le koku ai tou oku?!
“Why can’t I burrow into this blanket?!”

Notes: It’s the best day of the catting week—the day that rhymes with “Saturday”, but for some reason isn’t Saturday: Iiiiiiiiiiit’s CATURDAY! HAPPY CATURDAY!!!

Today Erin sent me this picture:

She explained to me that Keli had tried to burrow into the yellow chair cover you see there. It wasn’t much of a blanket, though (it’s just a chair cover), so she couldn’t manage. Then she tried to tug at the chair cover to have it topple over her to form a little cave, but that didn’t work. Then she looked to Erin for help, and Erin took her picture. I believe the expression on her face says something like, “That’s not helping.”

Today’s word is a reduplication of opa, which means “dig”. I thought “burrow” was a good way to translate opaopa. It’s kind of like scurrying and digging at the same time, which is what this is: little digging motions into something.

Say, I wonder where Keli is right now…? It’s about time she started begging for food… Hmm… I’m hungry too, come to think of it. Maybe it’s time for a trip to the kitchen…

fowe

• (v.) to bury
• (n.) burying, burial (the act)
• (adj.) buried

Tiku ei fowe!
“Bring it on!”

Notes: Literally this translates to “I stand buried”. It’s kind of a joke that’s now used as a phrase to mean something like, “Bring it on!” or, “I’m ready for you!” or, “What you got?!” It derives from kids who play a game in the ocean where you try to stand up straight as a wave comes without getting knocked over—and without swimming or diving or treading water. The idea here is you try to bury your feet in the sand to get yourself ready for the wave. (It doesn’t always work—I know this first hand.)

Anyway, what it’s referring to is the big match-up tomorrow between the Lions and Bears. It’s a big game for each team, but it’s a bigger game for me in fantasy football. I’m 2-2 and need to win this game to stay in the hunt. I’m down 85-36 (which, I realize, sounds bad), but I have Matt Stafford, Calvin Johnson and Jahvid Best (from Berkeley!) yet to play; the other guy’s got no one. Between the three of them, I need to make up 49 points. If Stafford blows up, he can get 49 points by himself. Combined, my boys can do it—provided the Lions do well and mulchify the Bears.

So they better buckle down and mulchify the Bears.

And me? I got my feet buried; I’m ready. Bring it!

na’ao

• (n.) lemon
• (adj.) lemon-tasting, lemony

Ka hava ei i novu oi na’ao, kae ivivi amo i’i ima!
“I had a soup with lemon, and I really liked it!”

Notes: Which is unexpected, because I hate lemons—and sour things, in general. Honestly, I don’t even believe those who say they “like” sour things. It’s not possible: sour means bad! Think about it: Would you rather talk with a sweet person, or a sour one? And bitter, too! It makes absolutely no sense to me.

But, of course, when mixed with other flavors, sourness has its place, and this soup (artichoke and lemon) was quite enjoyable. I told my wife about it, and she thinks it sounds awesome; she’s going to try making it (and I’m excited about that prospect!).

Today’s word is kind of a compound. The word na there should be recognizable as “tongue”, and ao has no meaning. Rather, it’s what your mouth does when you bite into something sour: it kind of puckers and draws in (to try to protect your injured tongue!). So it kind of translate as “ao tongue”, and that’s the word for “lemon”.

On the plane ride from Fargo to Denver today I had a wonderful conversation with artist and journalist Jennifer Heath (bio here). She was at the symposium in Concordia to talk about the satellite installation of her art exhibition The Veil: Visible & Invisible Spaces. She actually gave me the idea for a different type of relay, which I might try to get started over on the relay list (and something similar might have been done on Conlang a couple years back; it’s just at the edge of my memory). The idea is a “write-around” story (i.e. one person writes a line, then passes it to the next person who writes the next line, and so on), except each line would be written in a different conlang. I think it could work—and that the results could potentially be hilarious! (Or poignant or exciting, I suppose; it’d depend on where the participants decided to take it.)

Got to get home first, though. I’m in the great mall of Denver waiting for my plane… CPU says it’s 4:12 p.m., which means it’s 3:12 p.m. here, and the plane’s supposed to take off at 3:44 p.m… Hey, that’s not too far away. Better get ready to shut this down.

peka’u'u

• (n.) homeland

Kiko nemei ei ie peka’u'u li’i.
“Today I leave my homeland.”

Notes: I’m currently sitting in the John Wayne Airport (not at my actual gate, since there—and nowhere else—the outlets aren’t working) getting ready to fly to the wilds of eastern North Dakota. I won’t be there long, though, as I’ll immediately head over to western Minnesota for the 2011 Faith, Reason & World Affairs Symposium to spread the good word about conlanging. It should be fun, provided it isn’t going to be as cold as the Weather Channel seems to think it’s going to be (no room for a jacket). Plenty nice in the airport, presently.

We’ll see if I can keep up with the word of the day posts. If anything, I should only miss a day—two at the most. I’ve got other things to do with the computer right now, though, so I’m going to attend to those. Happy day to one and all!

pata

• (n.) dirt, earth, ground, soil
• (adj.) brown
• (v.) to be brown
• (nm.) a boy’s given name

Toku ia ie pa ie pata.
“Put the bowl on the ground.”

Notes: I actually took a double take with this iku. I thought pata was a simple ikunoala, but it isn’t. It’s built off the syllabic glyph for pa, but has the glyph for water, lelea, superimposed over it. The way I think of it is the pa glyph somehow represents the earth (the top of the triangle is where the people walk, and it goes down to the core of the earth), and the lelea over it is used to indicate that it’s the substance that’s meant: the dirt.

The word pata is also used as a name for boys. To learn more about that name, go here.