Re: weekly vocab

At 03:14 PM 4/1/2002 -0500, a David wrote:
>     Anyway, Aidan, I love this idea! ~:D  I'm glad that it seems to have
>taken quite nicely.
    So am I! I decided that if I was sick of seeing offtopic chatter, then
I ought to do something to bring it on topic. It seems to be working fairly
well!

   Appropos of nothing, what ever happened to the last relay? Anyone know?


>     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?

      Nope, birches are not native to Hawaii (I lived there for 5 years).
They have distinctive white bark, though, so you could try the candlenut,
which also has white bark and very silvery leaves. It produces huge nuts
(candlenuts!) rich in oil, which were strung on palm fronds and burnt as
candles. Sort of a birch-cognate for the pacific islands...

   Aidan

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