Kenipi
• Thursday, July 21st, 2011kenipi
- (n.) gecko
I kenipi te e’i o ei.
“There’s a gecko on my foot.”
Notes: So, somewhere, somehow, there’s this awesome picture of my foot with a gecko on it that I took in Hawai’i. I can’t find it right now (amongst my 11,000 pictures), and may not have it, since I took it before the time I was putting pictures on my computer. But it’s somewhere.
There are geckos all over Hawai’i, and for “pests”, they’re quite charming. I decided to port them over to the Kamakawi Islands, as well. I can’t remember for certain if this word for gecko came after my visit to Hawai’i or before, but since it’s on the particular version of my font that it’s on, I’m going to guess it came after.
This iku comprises three syllabic iku: ke, ni and pi. I put ke where I did (rather than building this iku off kepi, for example) in order to make it look like the head of the gecko. So while the iku is a true ikunoala, it kind of looks like a stylized gecko (imagine the spikes of pi being the legs).