| Site | Kamakawi  |
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| Translation Image | 
If image fails to load, try this link. |
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| Language | Kamakawi |
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| Year | 2002 |
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| Translator | David J. Peterson |
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| Introduction | Frustrated at the lack of instructional materials for the Hawaiian language, I created Kamakawi: a language that isn't Hawaiian, but might kind of sound like it. It's my newest language, but already it's my second most complete, and clearly the one I enjoy the most. The romanization of Kamakawi is pretty straightforward. The only convention worth noting is that ' is used to indicate a glottal stop, as in Hawaiian. Stress is on the penultimate syllable, except where indicated by an acute accent. |
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| Verse 1 | Ka peka i ape kalaka oi oalala poi. |
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| Verse 2 | Kau imawawakaiu upea a ie ku neva'a i ava ae peka Tinala pe, ku hepale ae pe. |
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| Verse 3 | Ku hekala i ika ti, "He'ea, he lama ue i timitiú u kava i uamo." Kae timitiú i leya ka iele i i'iele poupea. |
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| Verse 4 | Ku hekala poiu ti, "He paki ue i paleumi oi penute i ue a kopu ono o penute iu kawi, au atau ue, heoku u kawakawa'u heva e ave o peka." |
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| Verse 5 | Ka kau Takepolilao ele mata ie paleumi oie penute poke paki'u tiu mali tiemi. |
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| Verse 6 | Ke hekala poiu ti, "He! Ape peka, a ape kalaka i upea uila, au hepaki upea i iko. Oku li'u eleumi au takepo'u upea i hoa liwi'u upea a. |
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| Verse 7 | Ima! He kau ei e mimile ie kalaka o upea pe, aupe kala upea ioku ika. |
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| Verse 8 | Ke kawakawa Takepolilao i upeape heva e ave o peka, kau pu'uke upea ie paleumi. |
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| Verse 9 | Ape tomi'u amo ti "Imimile", ale mimile Takepolilao ie kalaka o inotu uila pe, e kawakawa i upeape heva e ave o peka. |
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| Interlinear Translation 1 | (Past-new subject) (land) (predicate) (one) (language) (and/with) (word) (few). |
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| Translation 2 | (Past-new subject-plural) (travel westward) (3rd pers. plur., non-gender specific) (progressive) (predicate-definite article: COMP) (past-same plural subject) (find) (predicate) (plain) (inside) (land) ("Shin'ar") (there), (past-same plural subject) (inceptive-to live at) (inside) (there). |
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| Translation 3 | (Past-same plural subject) (inceptive-talk) (pred.) (again) (by means of), "(listen), (vocative) (make) (1st plu. inclusive) (pred.) (brick) (same subj.) (cook) (pred.) (3rd neu. plu.)." (past-new subject from previous statement) (brick) (pred.) (rock) (past-new subj.) (clay) (pred.) (mortar) (with respect to-them). |
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| Translation 4 | (Past-same plural subject) (inceptive-talk) (out) (by means of), "(vocative) (build) (1pl.inc.) (pred.) (city) (and/with) (tower) (pred.) (1pl.inc.) (new singular subject) (touch) (head) (gen) (tower) (pred.+def.plu.) (cloud), (new plural subject) (make a name, gain fame) (1pl.inc.), ("lest") (same plural subject) (scatter-passive) (throughout/across/over) (the) (chest) (gen) (earth)". |
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| Translation 5 | (Past-new singular subject) (descend) (trickster) (same singular subject-because) (see) (pred.-def.sg.) (city) (with-def.sg.) (tower) (past-same singular subject) (build-passive) (oblique-plural) (child) (gen.-human) (pred.). |
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| Translation 6 | (Past-same subject) (say) (out) (by measn of), "(vocative)! (one) (land), (and) (one) (language) (for) (3plu) (all), (new plural subject) (inceptive-build) (3plu) (pred.) (this). (Neg.) (get-passive) (everything) (new plu. subj.) (mimic-to do) (3plu) (pred.) (resumptive particle-new singular subject) (keep from-passive) (3plu) (now)." |
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| Translation 7 | (enactive particle)! (vocative) (descend) (1s) (same subject) (confuse-causative) (pred-def.sg.) (language) (gen.) (3plu) (there), (new plural subject-therefore) (talk) (they) (pred.-neg.) (again). |
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| Translation 8 | (Past-same subject) (scatter) (trickster) (pred.) (3plu-there) (throughout) (def.sg.) (chest) (gen.) (earth), (past-new plural subject) (stop) (they) (pred.-def.sg.) (city). |
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| Translation 9 | (new singular subject-therefore) (to name-passive) (3sneu) (by means of) "(Confusion)", (new singular subject-because) (to confuse-causative) (trickster) (pred.-def.sg.) (language) (gen.) (Earth) (all of) (there), (same subject) (scatter) (pred.) (3plu-there) (throughout) (def.sg.) (chest) (gen.) (land). |
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| English Paraphrase 1 | The land was one language with few words. |
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| Paraphrase 2 | They were traveling westward when they found a plain in the land of Shin'ar, and they took up residence there. |
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| Paraphrase 3 | They said amongst themselves, "Hey, listen, let's make and fire bricks." And the brick to them was rock and the clay to them was mortar. |
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| Paraphrase 4 | Then they said, "Let's build a city with a tower whose head shall reach the clouds, and so we'll make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered all over the face of the Earth." |
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| Paraphrase 5 | And so God came down to see the city and the tower the children of human beings had built. |
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| Paraphrase 6 | And so he said, "Would you look at that? One land, and one language for the lot of them, and they're starting to build this... Now nothing they should plan will be denied them." |
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| Paraphrase 7 | Come! I'll go down there and confuse their language, so that they won't be able to communicate with each other. |
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| Paraphrase 8 | So God scattered them all over the face of the Earth, and they stopped building the city. |
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| Paraphrase 9 | Therefore it was called "Confusion", because mimile there God confused the language of all the Earth, and from there he scattered them over the face of the Earth. |
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| Notes 1 | Kamakawi is a VSO language, though in equative/inequative sentences, the verb "to be" isn't rendered, so the order is SO. The predicate marker separates the subject from all other objects, and can have other grammatical markers attached to it. |
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| Notes 2 | Wow! A couple interesting things here. First, you can see how the subject markers work, and how you can drop the subject when the same subject markers are used. Next, you see a complementation phrase. It's begun by the particle "ie", which used to have a meaning, but doesn't any longer, and finished in this case by "pe", which means "there", which indicates the idea of "at the time that" or "when". Next, there's the obligatory adverb that accompanies some verbs which are naturally transitive--in this case, "hepale", "to reside", which usually takes an object. When it doesn't, the adverb "ae", "inside", is used aftter the object clauses and before other adverbs to kind of fill in for the missing object; it has no meaning on its own. |
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| Notes 3 | Adding the inceptive to "talk" makes the verb "to say", which functions in a particular way in this context. The direct object of "to say" must always be the person(s) or thing(s) to whom one speaks, and the actual thing said will be an indirect object, which will be preceded by "ti", which is an instrumental marker, of sorts. Next, the command form of a verb is simply the bare form with no subject marker, and the subject marker "he" indicates a type of informal command, such as "let us do x" or "may you do y". Also, the subject marker "kae" indicates that the subject is new, but that it was somewhere else in the previous statement. So, it is a new subject, but it's not a completely new topic, just a new focus. Also, the word for "brick" comes from Zhyler, which is why the accent is in a different place. |
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| Notes 4 | The main verb, "hekala", "to say", has no object in this sentence, so it takes a mandatory verb fill, as most naturally transitive verbs do in Kamakawi, which, in this case, happens to be "poiu". It comes directly after the subject NP in intransitive sentences. It kind of "fills in" for the missing object. The phrase "face of the Earth" is translated as "chest of the Earth", because flat surfaces that face up are characterized as chests rather than faces. |
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| Notes 5 | Takepolilao is the earliest word for God, who was kind of a trickster, and that's what the word literally translates to and is used for now. To form a relative clause from a direct object, the subordinate verb must be passivized. The target of relativization, then, is followed by the preposition /po-/, which is prefixed to the appropriate subject marker (in this case, past tense and same subject). |
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| Notes 6 | This "deny" business is a serial verb construction. The base sentence (replacing "that which they plan" with X and "them" with Y) reads: X will not be gotten and be kept from Y. The resumptive particle "ho" attaches to subject and predicate markers and let's one know that the main clause will continue and the relative clause is finished. |
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| Notes 7 | The "enactive particle" is something like "onward!" and "come!" and "let's go!", which is used to call one to action. I didn't know what other name to give it. For the last phrase, I couldn't use the verb "hear", which, in this context, would mean that God would go down and deafen them all so they couldn't hear anything. I also couldn't use the word for "understand", since it's the same as the word "to see", and the literalness of it wouldn't make any sense. So I used "to talk". It works. :) |
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| Notes 8 | "Pu'uke" is the word "puke" with a negative infix. "Puke" indicates that one finishes, completes something; "pu'uke" that one stops doing it without completing it. |
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| Notes 9 | I've elected to simply use the passive to clear up this non-subject business. |
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| Submitted By | David J. Peterson |
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| Date Submitted | Saturday, April 06, 2002 |
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| Updated By | David J. Peterson |
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| Date Edited | Friday, July 01, 2005 |
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| Description Of Update | Fixed a couple typos, and an inexcusable grammatical error. Also added an image of the text in the Kamakawi script. |
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| Date To Headline | Sunday, July 03, 2005 |
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