Kamakawi Word of the Day

leti

• (v.) to be rusty, to be rust-covered
• (adj.) rusty, rusted, rust-covered

Leti ei!
“I’m rusty!”

Notes: Heh, heh. That’s a little play on a song from The Venture Bros.

Today’s word is an instantiation of a very old (and no longer productive) pattern. The word derives directly from late, the word for “rust”, and the iku also derives from the iku for late. Basically, a few lines have been added, making it look like this poor, upside-down metal bird is shining with rustiness. Ha. Love it.

late

• (v.) to rust
• (n.) rust
• (n.) rusting

Late ia, he Paleti! Late!
“Rust, Brady! Rust!”

Notes: Well, it wasn’t a great game, but it was a pretty good game—and it had the right outcome! There were a couple of outstanding plays and it was a close game the whole way, but in the end, the Patriots fell to the Giants: 21-17. Nothing makes me happier than to see Tom Brady and Bill Belichick suffer.

Today’s word isn’t related at all to the word for “metal” (moka), but the iku is. Check it out. Late, which means “rust”, is the iku for moka turned on its head (to indicate that something bad has happened to it). As metal in its natural state isn’t rusty, rusted metal is the “bad” version of it—hence, the iku.

leke

• (n.) olona, hemp (used to make fabric, rope, etc.)
• (adj.) made from olona

Li ia i ipe levu leke e nevi i’i.
“Give me that olona rag.”

Notes: This is, basically, hemp that’s used to make stuff. I always get a kick out of this iku, though. I call it “Old Tooth-Head”. Also kind of reminds me of those things that pump oil. When I was a kid, I would call them army ants.

I’ve made my piece with the Patriots winning this Super Bowl. I’m prepared to approach with a zen-like calm. Instead, I will focus my attention on replays of the Puppy Bowl. Nothing warms the heart (or the feet, come to think of it) more than adorable puppies. I shall think on them while enduring an awful Patriots victory.

teka

• (n.) (sea) salt

Li ia ie teka livu e nevi i’i.
“Pass me the salt.”

Notes: There’s no polite version of “give” here, so nevi serves. (Wait a minute! I’ve never done nevi?! Man oh man!) Salt will come most naturally from the sea to island-dwellers, so the type of salt this refers to is sea salt. It’s been extended to salt that comes from other sources (they both do the trick), but the sea is its true origin.

a’iki

• (n.) coral reef

I a’iki kavi pe.
“There’s a large coral reef there.”

Notes: A’iki is certainly an older word, and its iku is one of those that defies exact description. It’s, of course, built off the iku for “white”, a’i, but there’s no etymological relationship between the two. It features the “ground” determinative (used with places and locations), and it also kind of looks like a coral reef, but that could just be me. So it might’ve been an ikuleyaka, but usually those don’t have any phonological component.

Hey, apropos of nothing, if you want to see something good, check out the latest series at the Kēlen Word of the Day blog. Sylvia’s translated “The Jabberwocky” into Kēlen and is discussing the translation line by line. I never thought of the “slithy toves” as lizard, but that’s part of the fun!

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.

ukeuke

• (n.) rottenness, rot
• (adj.) rotten

I ukeuke i ipe foye.
“There is a rottenness on that papaya.”

Notes: HAPPY CATURDAY!!!

Today’s word has nothing to do with today’s cat picture (another from when Keli was sitting on top of the couch):

To complete the cycle of rottenness, we have ukeuke. On occasion, a stem by itself becomes a kind of verbal noun. Sometimes it takes the -kV suffix. In this case, a full reduplication was used for the nominal form, giving us “rottenness”.

Since the full reduplication is so often associated with adjectives, though, ukeuke can be used adjectivally to mean the same thing as uke.

And with that, I have finished! No more of rottenness, or rotting: Let us speak only of cats! Cats and meowing and murring!

uke

• (v.) to be rotten
• (adj.) rotten

Ai uke ipe, ua…?
“Is that rotten, or…?”

Notes: You know that feeling when you’re looking at food and you can’t tell if it’s moldy or not? Tough experience, that one. For example, I had these leftover bratwursts, and they kind of looked like they might have the beginnings of mold growing on them, but it could just as easily have been congealed grease—I couldn’t tell! So…I went ahead and ate them. I’m not dead yet. We’ll see what happens.

Anyway, oddly enough, uke is a good word to illustrate the occasional nature of certain Kamakawi lexemes. Often a lexeme can be used as a verb, adjective and noun, and often the meanings will be predictable. Sometimes the predictability breaks down, though it often does so in predictable ways.

In the case of uke, it’s used only as a verb or adjective; never as a noun. We’ll see how this plays out in the coming days.

The iku for uke is fairly straightforward: the base is u, and the little tooth from ke fits on top right in the middle. ALl the ke words have the little tooth kind of glommed on somewhere where it seems to fit. This one always reminded me of a bird in a nest.

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.

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…