I’m Confused (again)

I’m Confused (again) was Originally Posted on March 20, 2005 by lavarock

This entry is somewhat similar to a previous blog, but what the heck.

I posted this in FlyerTalk after a member asked a funny question “Island or peninsula?”. There was no other reference, just THAT question, meant to evoke a laugh.

My response was:

—

By any other name….

——————————————————————————–

Ok, hang on for dear life…

I live on an island, the island called Hawaii in the county of Hawaii in the state of Hawaii.

Yet when people say they are go to Hawaii, many mean they are going to the island called Oahu in the county of Oahu in the state of Hawaii.

So my island (the one they call Hawaii), we have to call it the Big Island, because well, it is the biggest island.

If you live here you can only say you are Hawaiian if you have Hawaiian blood. Otherwise you are a visitor or malahini. When visitors came to old Hawaii they were called haole, a foreigner. Since the foreigners were all caucasions, haole generally means white person.

So on this island is a town we call Kona, but Kona also means the leeward side of the island, so the west side is the Kona Side. To avoid confusion with the direction/town name, they also call the town Kailua. Well there is a Kailua on Oahu, but it is on the east side of that island, so they call this town here on my island Kailua-Kona.

To further complicate matters, there is a town here called Volcano but luckily, it is right near the volcano, well near “A” volcano, because this particular island has at least 5 volcanos. They range from extinct (or hopefully close to it) right up to active. Every other island also was formed from at least 1 volcano.

Now in this state, any older woman is called “Auntie” and older man called “Uncle” whether that person is actually related to the person or not.

There is a word the Hawaiians use, Aloha. This means hello or welcome. It also means good bye. They also use it to express love.

Here in/on the islands, there is a fish. The name of the fish is mahi mahi, perhaps you have heard of it? Well they also call the fish a dolphin-fish with the emphasis on the fish part so people don’t think they are eating a regular dolphin, which is not a fish but a mammal.

Mahi mahi is not to be confused with ahi, which is a yellow fin tuna, not to be confused with a regular tuna. The regular tuna must not be a fish or people would not specify tuna as being “tuna FISH” unless there was a non-fish tuna. Does that make sense?

Here in the islands there is an expression “ono” meaning good. But ono is also the name of a fish. Ono is also known as a wahoo (not to be confused with Yahoo) and the ono is a close relative to the mackerel, except that unlike the mackerel, the ono does not school.

Now there is an expression here called “dakine” which really has no meaning but can be used to express whatever the person wishes it to mean. “That dakine guy gets on my nerves”.

On an island, even this big island, we don’t know north or south. We use the expression mauka (towards the mountain) and makai (towards the sea). Sometimes it makes more sense to say you are headed towards a town or landmark (on Oahu you might be Ewa bound or Diamond Head bound). Note that Diamond Head (the volcano crater) was not named because it looks like a diamond, but rather that parts of it glistened like a diamond.

Ok, so I hope you hung on and followed along. The following will test your understanding:

My Hawaiian Auntie and my haole Uncle fly Hawaii. Dey go Ewa-bound to get some dakine ono ahi! It was so good, it broke da mouth. Then dey went windward and mauka go see Diamond Head. When dey got to Kona-Town dey went pass volcano to dah park see Pele in her splendor. I wish dem much aloha!