Kamakawi Word of the Day

nupa

• (n.) triggerfish

Ka ni’u nupa i’i!
“The triggerfish bit me!”

Notes: The triggerfish is quite the curious fish. Check it out here (nice pictures!). I’ve never swum about with triggerfish, but I imagine if I did, I’d try to give them their space.

By the way, I think this would be a cool crest—and nickname—for a soccer team. For colors, I’m imagining white, gray, gold, black with teal accents. Hmmm… Maybe I’ll have to try to create some uniforms… I think that would be a productive use of my time.

ilo

• (n.) oar (of a boat)

Au utu ilo o eneta.
“The oars of the ship are broken.”

Notes: Yesterday’s word was iloa, which is right next to today’s word alphabetically, so I thought I’d throw it up. Nothing special about oars, I suppose—or this iku. The iku comprises a pair of oars. For boats. And rowing. Hooray!

The iku itself is still pretty simple (just four strokes), so I figure it works out well enough. By the way, for those who have never tried to row a small boat or canoe: not as easy as it looks! I was surprised. Also, it looks completely automatic, the rowing motion. It’s not. That’s something you’ve got to work at. Good workout, though.

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”.

foka

• (n.) fish (or any animal that lives primarily in the sea)

I ilea! Ai foka toi li’ia ai?
“Hello! Got any fish on you?”

Notes: HAPPY CATURDAY!!!

This is my second time around writing this post, thanks to the DreamHost outage yesterday (IT ATE MAH POST!11!!). Here’s Keli, twisting up the way she does when she wants to get comfy:

As I explained yesterday, I believe Keli now knows when she’s being photographed, and relishes it. The second I unbutton my little iPhone camera case, she perks up—will wake up if she was previously asleep, even (I can’t get pictures of her asleep anymore!). And then she poses and looks straight at the camera. What a cat!

Today’s word was inspired by the Spanish word “marisco”. We often see it pluralized (“mariscos”), where it means “seafood”. I liked the idea of having a single word refer to everything that comes out of the sea. The difference with foka is that it doesn’t refer primarily to food the way “mariscos” and certainly “seafood” does.

fie

• (n.) albacore tuna (or just tuna)

A kaneko i oi’i poe havava i fie.
“I have a cat who likes tuna.”

Notes: I do! And yet, she only likes fish, it would seem, in the form of treats. Give her actual fish—in a bowl—and she’ll give it a sniff and then turn her nose away. What a cat she is…

This is actually one of my favorite glyphs, and i completely forgot about it. All it is is fi rotated 180°, but in rotating it, it reveals a “V” shape that’s reminiscent of e, turning it into a kind of ikunoala. I thought it was pretty clever. As for the fish, I like it; it’s pretty good. Not my favorite, but I dig it.

uno

• (n.) pool of water

A tutuku lelea o ipe uno.
“The water from that pool is fresh.”

Notes: This is a common word. It’s something smaller than a lake, but larger than a puddle. Whenever you see a little bit of water anywhere, it’s an uno. They’re all over the islands: salty and fresh.

hope

• (adj.) deep
• (n.) depth
• (v.) to be deep

A hope ipe ha lona!
“That river is too deep!”

Notes: Good old “deep”. What a neat concept. It doesn’t even make sense that it exists. If you’re going to swim across a river, it doesn’t matter how deep it is: You’re going to be swimming across the top. And as far as the swimming goes, it’s no different swimming across a river that’s twenty feet across and five feet deep than it is swimming across a river that’s twenty feet across and a hundred feet deep.

The iku for hope is kind of a sneaky one. The “v” shape serves as a kind of arrow, and the “ground” determinative fills it out, but it also looks like a pair of legs diving into water—or maybe a whale’s tail when it dives.

nova

• (n.) manta ray

Au mawa nova ika!
“And the rays swim again!”

Notes: I was planning to do another word for today’s word of the day, but I happen to be watching the Rays and Yankees, and have been lucky enough to bare witness to one of the most incredible comebacks in pre-post season history. Down 7-0 pretty much the entire game, the Rays scored 6 runs in the 8th, and then, with two outs and two strikes in the bottom of the ninth, their season nearly over, their pinch hitter hit a home run to right to tie it. Just incredible. At the time of writing, the game is still going (it’s in the top of the tenth), so they may still lose it—and the Red Sox are still playing, so even if they lose, there’s still a slim chance they could get to the playoffs—but even so, what an incredible game! Baseball has done it again.

The Tampa Bay Rays used to be called the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Though a nova is not a devil ray, it’s in the ray family, so I figured it was close enough. Even though it’s curvy, I like this iku; kind of reminds me of the Queensrÿche logo.

upi

• (v.) to float (on the water)
• (adj.) floating

Ka mata ei i kuaki poke upi ie lelea!
“I saw a duck floating on the water!”

Notes: I kind of forgot about this word for awhile. I assumed, just looking at it, that it was an ikunoala. Then I went to actually look at it, and I saw that line, and thought, “That looks nothing like u…”

And, sure enough, it’s not an ikunoala. Rather, what it is is the iku for pi with a line over it to indicate the water line (the same line used in me). And while the pi is under the water, it kind of makes sense to me—like something is floating above, but you just can’t see it.

I’m sure the reason I did this is because the glyph for pi is such a meaty glyph. It can stand on its own easily, and should serve as a base for other glyphs wherever possible, says I.

ilave

• (n.) storm
• (adj.) stormy
• (v.) for there to be a storm

A male ilave.
“Storm’s coming.”

Notes: Seems like a rather simple term, just haven’t done it yet. The word derives from the word lave, which means “rain”. I’d wager that the word for “storm”, when it’s not a basic term, derives from a word for “wind” in a lot of natlangs. I think I’d be an interesting word to look up, comparatively. Probably lots of interesting coinages the world over.

Tomorrow I’m starting up fantasy football again. It’ll be the first live draft I’ve participated in in…probably five years. We’ll see how it goes (I’ll have to post my roster here). Cross your fingers for me!