Quaranteam - 808 State Ch. 05-06

superendous: Kat's 4 years old. What sort of word do YOU think this is? (Ch. 5)

ʻōkole: Hawaiian word for bottom. That one you guys probably figured out from context, yeah? A fun word. Especially when you're yelling at your kids, "Eh! You keiki kolohe get back hea, or I goin' tan your ʻōkole!" ("Hey! Get back here you naughty kid, or I'm gonna spank you!" Seriously, I'm not sure how that's supposed to make the keiki want to come back, cause they're probably scampering off cause they did something that would get their ʻōkole tanned anyway. At least, that was the case when I was a keiki.) (Ch. 5)

ʻopihi: A limpet (shellfish) endemic to Hawaiʻi. Considered a delicacy, raw or cooked. Harvesting them is legal, subject to certain time, place, size, and quantity restrictions; that Facebook post saying "no can" is a load of shibai (bullshit). But the buggahs stick good to the rocks, so you gotta pry them off. But for the big one that gets stuck to your legs, giggling, I recommend tickles. (Ch. 6)

hanabata: Pidgin (evolved from Japanese hanakuso) word for boogers or snot. Hana is the Japanese word for "nose" and bata is a pidgin modified spelling of "butter". So it's literally "nose butter". Used to refer to small-kid time (i.e., childhood), cause keiki always get da hanabata all ova dere face! ("... little kids always have snot all over their face!") Funny fact — the original Japanese word it evolved from, hanakuso apparently translates to "nose shit". So... I dunno which one local moms should want their keiki saying. (Ch. 6)

Madame Pele: Pele, (Peh•leh, please, please, PLEASE say her name correctly!) referred to as Madame Pele or Tūtū Pele by those who respect or revere her, is the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes and fire. Pele-honua-mea, Pele of the sacred lands; who dwells in Halemaʻumaʻu-on-Kīlauea; destroyer of earth and creator of new land. Everyone who grows up in Hawaiʻi is familiar (or at least acquainted) with the legends of Madame Pele, legends that take place not just on Hawaiʻi Island, but even over on Maui, Oʻahu, and Kauaʻi. The surprise May 2018 volcanic eruption that consumed 700 homes in the lower Puna district on Hawaiʻi Island is a reminder of Tūtū Pele's reach and awesome power of simultaneous destruction and creation. Yes, 700 homes were destroyed, 24 people injured (23 on a boat that was too close to an explosion at an ocean entry), and about 1700 needed to evacuate, but 875 acres of new land were added to Hawaiʻi Island. In a true WTF occurrence: there was so much steam produced when the lava from the eruption hit the ocean that it resulted in a June snowfall on Mauna Kea!

tūtū, puna, kūpuna, kupuna: So, I realized I might have given people an incorrect impression in the Chapter 1 Glossary. There are a number of ways to say Grandma & Grandpa in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, cause we might say tūtū wahine or kupuna wahine for Grandma, or tūtū kane or kupuna kane for Grandpa.

Now... There's something kinda interesting here from a linguistic view. There's actually no "t" in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi proper. The 8 consonants are h, k, l, m, n, p, w, and the ʻokina. I dunno why, but at some point, tūtū evolved from kūkū, although there's a bit of a push to go back the other (alphabetically correct) way. So there are 3 possible words to use with the gender modifier! Grandparents as a collective term can be kūpuna, or on an individual level kupuna.

Again, as I said in the intro in Chapter 1, I am not an expert in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi. I'm trying my best to ensure that words are presented to you correctly, and as we actually use them here, but I grew up speaking da kine (Pidgin) and English, and I myself often don't know if someone is saying kupuna or kūpuna unless I'm really paying attention and prepared to listen, and I sure as hell don't know all the ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi grammar rules. Sometimes I have a really hard time with that damn kahakō. (But I will absolutely call someone out if they say "kapuna" when they mean "kupuna". "Ho, bra, you wen call your tūtū one SPOON?" Cause that's the thing that ALL the kūpuna drilled into us in grade school during the cultural education classes. [There's also a language joke buried in there, but I won't go into it in detail; suffice to say "kapuna" (ka puna) does NOT actually mean "spoon".])

On a related topic, I'm trying to decide if I should also collect these submittal Glossaries and the little ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi language lessons into a standalone Glossary to submit maybe after Chapter 10. Arguments against it are the fact that I am totally not fucking qualified to do that, and am therefore slightly terrified by the thought of it. And there's already a shit-ton of web-pages out there with ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi (some good, some... ennhhh), and do we really need one more? (Needless to say, I was SUPER glad that "Standalone Glossary" only got a maximum of 5 [depending on method] votes — no offense to you guys that voted for that but I was fo' reals biting my nails in nervousness.)

I started writing this story because I wanted to show people the non-tourist parts of Hawaiʻi, and some of our history and how it's shaped our modern multi-ethnic blended culture. And, hey, I'm a guy, and the harem concept is hot (yeah, yeah, I know, some people would say I just repeated myself), and the Quaranteam setting that Devin McTaggert (CorruptingPower) created presents some interesting psychological possibilities — that was the incentive I needed to finally write the kind of story I wanted to see.

It wasn't until I started writing that I realized I needed to EXPLAIN — in writing — the words I've kinda always taken for granted that the people living around me understand. (Or if someone doesn't, folks're typically kind enough to explain it right then — verbally.) And, lemme tell you, that realization freaked me the fuck out, cause A) I wanna get it right, and B, C, D, E, and F) I REALLY don't wanna be da faka dat wen get um wrong, yeah? (Try fo' sound dat out — I betchu goin' get um. To help you, the "a" in Pidgin typically has an "ah" sound — same as in the ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi that makes up one of its contributing languages.)

So we'll see. Thanks for reading, folks. And I haven't been able to figure out a good closer for this submission — I know what I wanted to say, but I haven't yet managed to verify that my translation is accurate. So I'll go with an old standard, but I like it cause it works.

Aloha, (You probably all already know this one, cause it's the one Hawaiian word that everyone knows, "hello", "goodbye"... "love.")

Dis.