Kamakawi Word of the Day

ikeme

• (n.) basket

A liki ei ie iko ikeme kau…iu Kaneko!
“I claim this basket…for the cats!”

Notes: Happy Caturday!

Check out this shot that Erin got of Keli:

See, we’d tried previously (several times) to get Keli to hop into the empty basket so we could give her rides about the house. She wouldn’t get near the thing (I think she thought it was a kind of cage). However, when we put her favorite blue blanket in the dirty clothes (it needed washing), suddenly, there she is! And luckily Erin was quick with the camera.

I’d tell you how this word was derived, but, yet again, I’ve posted a word derived from a word I haven’t posted yet. Shame on me. I’ll remedy this soon. In the meantime, here’s that picture of Keli in the basket again!

inu

• (n.) stick

I iko? Iko i inu li’i.
“This? This here is my stick.”

Notes: Happy Caturday!

Today’s cat word was inspired by this picture:

One night I noticed that Keli was just having loads of fun playing with this stray pen that had been left on the ground. Erin reasoned that it probably wasn’t a good idea for her to be playing with a pen that had ink in it, so I thought I’d replace it with a chopstick. The rest is history. She absolutely loves her chopstick. She’ll bat it around, pounce on it, cradle it while sleeping. It’s fun to watch.

This iku is a combination of the iku for i and nu (the i part is at the bottom). One might wonder, based on the definition of nu, “Hey. Isn’t inu a combination of the i- prefix and nu?” To that, I’d say, “Uhhh…maybe?” I can’t even remember what I intended it to be. It seems it would be quite a coincidence for the meanings of inu and nu to be so similar. But I think what I was thinking is that the word is so old that it just had an iku all its own. Or so common. I’m not sure. Anyway, it’s here to stay, because I like its looks.

iema

• (v.) to be even, to be equal
• (v.) to be level
• (adj.) level
• (adj.) even, equal
• (n.) a leveling bowl

Au iema i’iepu.
“The piles are even.”

Notes: Don’t ask me what a leveling bowl is, because I’ve read the extended definition in my dictionary and I still don’t know.

“Equal”, in the sense used in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, can mean “of the same amount”, so I just used this Kamakawi word to mean “equal”. I don’t think it necessarily conveys the same connotations as the English word (probably understood much more literally), but it’s pretty close, so I stuck with it.

Ohhhhh! I just got it! See, in my dictionary, it says something like “a bowl with water in it and a line on it”. Now I get it. See, the bowl has a straight line carved into the inside of it, and you put water in the bowl, and put the bowl on whatever you want to be level. If the line of the water matches the line on the bowl, it’s even; if not, it’s not. Ta da!

Glad I figured that out; would’ve kept me up at night…

and

fo

• (syl.) glyph for the syllable fo in the Kamakawi syllabary
• (n.) conch shell

A ane fo ima.
“A conch shell is really loud.”

Notes: I mean, if you blow into it is. This one used to look like a conch shell, though I guess it doesn’t much anymore. Not much to say about it. This is one of the ones that doesn’t seem to get used very much. I think it’s because I may not like the syllable very much. The voiced one isn’t bad, though (vo). Eh.

and

la

• (syl.) glyph for the syllable la in the Kamakawi syllabary
• (n.) spear
• (expr.) a positive answer to a negative question

He tivale ei ie la li’i…
“Let me sharpen my spear…”

Notes: Good ol’ la pops up a lot. The determined version is used for “spear”, and the other is used for a positive answer to a negative question. We don’t have a word for this in English, but other languages do (French, for example). To give you an example for how it might be useful, consider the question, “Don’t you love me?” An answer of “yes” in English could mean “Yes, I do love you”, or it could mean “Yes, I don’t love you”. Quite a predicament! In languages like French and Kamakawi, there’s a special affirmative answer to negative polarity questions like this which always means “yes” (or the most positive answer), and then “no” means the negative one. That’s how undetermined la is used.

and

pa

• (let.) name of the Zhyler alphabet letter p
• (syl.) glyph for the syllable pa in the Kamakawi syllabary
• (n.) bowl

Neiwele ia ie pa ti lelea.
“Fill the bowl up with water.”

Notes: So now we get to the meat of the syllabary. Today is pa; tomorrow pe; the day after, the world.

For each of these syllables (or most of them, anyway) there will be two iku the undetermined iku and the determined iku (the one with the stroke beneath it). The determined iku is the one that bears the nominal meaning (today’s is “bowl”). The other is used exclusively as a syllabic glyph.

There’s also an important difference between these two (and like pairs to come). Kamakawi has a minimal word constraint: All content words must have two mora. A regular CV syllable has only one mora, so each of these words that are written as a CV syllable contain a phonetically long vowel. Kamakawi doesn’t distinguish between long and short vowels phonologically, of course, so this is the only place where long vowels pop up (and that’s why I don’t distinguish them even in the orthography). If you happen to be pronouncing the example sentence to yourself, then, be sure to give a little bit of extra length to pa, and you’ll be pronouncing it correctly.

tape

• (n.) net, netting
• (v.) to catch someone or something in a net, to net something
• (adj.) caught in a net

Tape ti ivupu; itava’u ti inoto.
“Caught in a web; removed from the world.”

Notes: Everybody! “Hanging on by a thread; spinning the lies; devised in my head!”

That’s the ol’ Dream Theater song “Caught in a Web”. I actually didn’t like it all that much the first time I heard it, but it’s grown on me…

Anyway, what word is this? Oh, right: tape. Yeah, that’s a net all right. Where would we be without nets?

Hey, you know what I find incredibly unconvincing? Every movie or television show wherein someone has a net thrown on them and suddenly they can’t move. Know what I would do if someone threw a net on me? I’d take the net off and ask them why the heck they threw a net on me. I mean, honestly: It’s a net! What are we, fish?! Use your freaking arms! I tells ya’…