Here’s one for your Friday reading, from Atlas Obscura: “‘Da Kine,’ Hawaii’s Fantastically Flexible All-Purpose Noun/It means everything and nothing at the same time“.
The author, Dan Nosowitz, write:
After I wrote about “jawn,” the all-purpose noun that’s embedded in the culture of Philadelphia, I started getting emails telling me about a similar, and maybe even wilder, term native to a small group of isolated islands nearly 5,000 miles away. Hawaii’s “da kine” is not only an all-purpose noun, capable of standing in for objects, events, and people: it’s also a verb, an adjective, an adverb, and a symbol of Hawaiian people and the unique way they speak.
Then he goes over the top: “It may be the most versatile phrase on the planet.”
It’s really an essay on Hawaiian Pidgin, and quite interesting. Check it out.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
This is pretty good.
Spouse and I – getting older and not always immediately remembering the names of people we haven’t run into for a while – now frequently turn to each other and say: “A’s da kine, right?” And as the writer points out, we both know who/what we mean.
Great article.
Back in 1984, I’d been living on Kauai for just a few months.
I was in the office supply store in Lihue, the kind where you’d go up to the counter and ask for something, and the clerks would fetch your item(s) for you. An older local woman came through the door. She went up to the counter and spoke to the clerk.
“Could I have da kine please?”
The store clerk smiled and said “Sure.” She went to get it.
The customer paid, thanked the clerk, and left the store.
I was stunned.
I realized at that moment that I really *wasn’t* on the East Coast any more, and that the very notion of communication here was different from other places. And I speculated that there would be more psychically gifted people here than where I’d come from, because folks would always need to be *stretching* mentally to make sure they knew what “da kine” meant every time.
That was such an important moment for me. It taught me something crucial, and extraordinary, about my new home. I am grateful, still, 33 beautiful years later. It’s da kine life for sure.
SWEET . . . and entirely believable.
“Hawaii’s “da kine” is not only an all-purpose noun, capable of standing in for objects, events, and people: it’s also a verb, an adjective, an adverb, and a symbol of Hawaiian people and the unique way they speak.”
Such a long, flowery description of what “da kine” is. A word whisker.
It is a great article. And it includes all the peoples of Hawaii.
Recently I needed to explain to a formal group how a particular person had taken a picture of his da kine which ended him up in the predicament he will forever be locked in. They got it. (Ian, email me if you think you need to censor me and I’ll explain.)
I asked my mother why the word “mahope” meaning “backward” (a hula move) also means “future” — she said “You have to think Hawaiian.” To me, da kine says just this.
Good article!
Regarding mahope, I don’t know Hawaiian yet, but in English our ancestors came before us and the future lies before us.
Nicely done, John.