Day 22: Vocabulary Lesson and Ghost Stories, Island-Style (J)

The local lingo can be a little confusing sometimes.  While pidgin is near-incomprehensible to me most times, and Hawaiian language signs hang everywhere (all seven consonant's worth), there's also other fun colloquial terms that I've had to pick up in order to communicate.   To that end, I have compiled a list of terms I've learned from both my housemates and aural observations on the bus.  Here are a few:

Choke-  Plenty, or a having a lot of something.  I hear this word almost more than any other here.  For example:  "There's choke food-- eat up!"

Haole-  A white person or tourist; at times used in a derogatory fashion.  Luckily, most people think I'm a local and am never called this.  Matt, on the other hand...

Junk-  Bad, not good.  ie: "Man, that was junk pho last night. Don't wanna eat there again."

Howzit- Hello! aka "what's going on? what's up? what's good?" I usually hear it used in the following way towards me: "Howzit braddah!"

Shaka- No, this is not a local term for "shocker." Get your mind out of the gutters, folks. It refers to the so-called "hang-loose" sign popularized by pop culture.  Here, it is a traditional greeting used to convey the "aloha" spirit, hello, goodbye, cool, or thanks.  I give it to the bus-driver and pedestrian friendly drivers a lot.

Da Kine- People use this in almost every situation, and it means anything or everything. It confuses me, because I have no clue what people are actually referring at the time of its usage.

Makai- When giving or receiving directions, this refers to the "ocean" side of a place.

Mauka- Refers to the "mountain" side.  All locations are either mountain-side or ocean-side.

Sketch- Sketchy or dodgy.  ie: "Yo, don't go there at night, it's pretty sketch."

Mahu- A very effeminate transvestite or homosexual man.  I have been told by my male housemates that, should I hear this word directed towards me, I am to fight them.  Which actually leads us to:

Scrap- Term used to describe "physical fight." Plenty folks here looooove to scrap.  I think it's the warrior culture.  When Matt and I bicker, I say: "F-it man, let's just scrap!"  He usually cries and pees in his pants a little after this.

** Thanks to Tami for the majority of my linguistics education.
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Speaking of Tami, one of the local lessons she has taught us is to avoid whistling at night.  apparently, this calls the spirits.  Well, late this evening, Matt and I were just lying down just watching t.v.  Suddenly, we hear someone quietly say hello from outside our window.  Now, neither of us actually acknowledged it, because we each individually thought we were hearing things.  Then we heard it again: "helloooo." Neither one of us could doubt hearing it at this point, and I mentioned our whistling earlier in the night.  At this point, Matt bolted up out of bed, screeched a little, and hit the door as he struggled to get out of the room.  Funniest ish ever.  It turned out to be a friend of one of our housemates who didn't want to make too much noise knocking at the door.  Still, funny stuff.