The Hawaiian Archipelago - Six Months Among The Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, And Volcanoes Of The Sandwich Islands By Isabella L. Bird
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There
Is One Native Word In Such Universal Use That I Already Find I
Cannot Get On Without It, Pilikia.
It means anything, from a
downright trouble to a slight difficulty or entanglement.
"I'm in a
pilikia," or "very pilikia," or "pilikia!" A revolution would be "a
pilikia." The fact of the late king dying without naming a
successor was pre-eminently a pilikia, and it would be a serious
pilikia if a horse were to lose a shoe on the way to Kilauea. Hou-
hou, meaning "in a huff," I hear on all sides; and two words, makai,
signifying "on the sea-side," and mauka, "on the mountain side."
These terms are perfectly intelligible out of doors, but it is
puzzling when one is asked to sit on "the mauka side of the table."
The word aloha, in foreign use, has taken the place of every English
equivalent. It is a greeting, a farewell, thanks, love, goodwill.
Aloha looks at you from tidies and illuminations, it meets you on
the roads and at house-doors, it is conveyed to you in letters, the
air is full of it. "My aloha to you," "he sends you his aloha,"
"they desire their aloha." It already represents to me all of
kindness and goodwill that language can express, and the convenience
of it as compared with other phrases is, that it means exactly what
the receiver understands it to mean, and consequently, in all cases
can be conveyed by a third person.
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