#hwotd #hawaiianWordOfTheDay “uluna” == “pillow” but guess what? It also means “upper arm”. What a nice image to acknowledge that your #upperArm is also the original, built-in, #pillow!

#hwotd #hawaiianWordOfTheDay maiʻa == #banana

#hwotd #hawaiianWordOfTheDay “palaka” == “shirt” (as in, “palaka aloha” == “Aloha shirt”) from English “frock,” not to be confused with “pālule” == “shirt” from the English “blouse” :blobcatpat: (because yes, I was getting them confused)

“Mea” == “thing, one,” but today I wanted to share that I just learned #oleloHawaii speakers use the word “mea” as a conversational filler, the way in #English we use “um.” When I studied #Spanish I was taught that Spanish speakers use “ese” == “that” the same way, & indeed I have heard it “in the wild” :blobcatfingerguns: #hwotd #hawaiianWordOfTheDay

#hwotd #hawaiianWordOfTheDay ʻulaʻula == red. Photo: Inside the #seattle #publiclibrary

#hwotd #hawaiianWordOfTheDay “beer” == “pia”

#hwotd #hawaiianWordOfTheDay “jasmine” = “pīkake”

#hwotd #hawaiianWordOfTheDay “pua” = “flower,” although it can also be used to mean “child,” kinda like the way in English I might say “kid” to mean a baby goat (which I think is the original meaning of the word?), but usually I just mean “child.” #flower #geranium

My kumu taught us these two as part of our weekly vocabulary: “lihilihi” means “#flower #petal” and “lihilihi maka” means “#eyelash” (we already learned “maka” means “eyes” or “face”) Isn’t that a lovely connection? #hwotd #hawaiianWordOfTheDay

#hwotd #hawaiianWordOfTheDay “blackberry” = “ʻōheloʻeleʻele”

#hwotd #hawaiianWordOfTheDay “spider” = “nananana” which features in the first #Hawaiian tongue twister I learned, “Nānā nā nananana i nā nananana – The spiders are watching the spiders,” from this blog:
https://hemomi.com/2018/02/08/nananana/

#hwotd #hawaiianWordOfTheDay “door” = “puka”

#hwotd #hawaiianWordOfTheDay “hōʻailona“ = “sign“

#hwotd #hawaiianWordOfTheDay #rose = loke. Nani kēia loke. = This rose is beautiful.

#hawaiianWordOfTheDay This beautiful #CaliforniaPoppy is growing in my yard. I don’t know the word for #poppy in #Hawaiian, so let’s learn together! Wehewehe (https://wehewehe.org) has an entry from the Māmaka Kaiao dictionary that says California Poppy is (drumroll please) “papi” :blobcatthumbsup:

#hwotd #hawaiianWordOfTheDay Ke Kelalani = The Astronaut
Hele ʻo #VictorGlover i ka mahina me ka #artemis2 !

So there are countless examples of Hawaiian vocabulary that are words from English, like “paikikala” for “bicycle.” Apart from specific foods or cultural terms (“laulau”, “kālua” pork), I’ve only run across one word that I think went in the other direction. The word for “coral” is “koʻa.” I haven’t looked it up, but I am guessing that the English word coral is taken from Hawaiian or a related Pacific Island language? #englishHawaiian #hawaiianLanguage #LearnHawaiian #hwotd #hawaiianWordOfTheDay

#hwotd #hawaiianWordOfTheDay So in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, poi means poi (taro-based staple) but ʻai, which means food in general, or to eat, can also mean poi. Like how in Cantonese the word for rice is also the word for food in general. This seems to have been the case in English with bread in the past (as in, give us this day our daily bread) but in English nowadays I don’t hear that conflation of the staple starch with food in general.