Re: weekly vocab

David Peterson wrote:
>>   1. birch (the tree)
>
>    So, I'm trying to do this for Kamakawi.  First, it's supposed to be a
>Hawaiian-like language.  While it doesn't have an associated culture, I
>imagine it as being spoken by people who lived on an island like the
Hawaiian
>islands, and, as such, I'd like to stick with the flora and fauna of the
>island.  One big problem, though, is that I've never BEEN to Hawaii.
Another
>big problem is that I don't know what the heck a birch tree looks like (I'm
>very bad with this; I'm trying to learn).  I looked in my big Hawaiian
>dictionary, and I couldn't find a word for "birch", which would suggest to
me
>that they don't have them, but does anyone know for sure?
The birch grows mainly in northern/temperate to cold climates like northern
US, Scandanavia, Russial; whether they grow in the southern hemisphere I
don't know. Anyway, probably not in the tropics.
It is mainly characterized by its white bark, which tends to flake off in
papery segments.  Native Americans used the bark to cover their canoes.

You might do as I did for Kash-- IIRC there is a tropical tree whose bark
was beaten to create a kind of cloth, from which clothing (sarongs and the
like) was made. (Doesn't sound very comfortable IMO.)   It's called the
Paper Mulberry; I forget the botanical name.  In most Polynesian langs. the
bark cloth is called _tapa_, that would probably be ??kapa in Hawaiian, but
the tree may not have made it to the islands.....

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