So I'm in the coffee shop looking through my Hawaiian dictionary for lack of anything more interesting to do, and I start to see words made up of other words I already know, like:
1. Thinking about "aku" and "mai" (as in "buy" and "sell"):
a'o mai = to learn a'o aku = to teach
ku'ai mai = to buy ku'ai aku = to sell
2. Thinking about the ho'o- prefix for verbs, that means something like "to cause":
maika'i = good; ho'omaika'i = congratulate, congratulations
hau'ole = happy, hana=work; (you learn 'hana' automatically in Hawaii because of "pau hana", work is over):
ho'ohanahau'ole = hobby (work that makes you happy)
3. "Kahuna" means chief or head, like "the big kahuna", and "pule" means "pray" (from English):
so "the prayer head" is "kahunapule", which is priest or minister. And the church is the "hale pule", the prayer house.
Speaking of "hale", Hawai'ian seems to have houses for everything:
hale ka'a: "car house" = garage
hale ku'ai: "buy house" = store
hale ki'i 'oni'oni: "moving picture house" = cinema
hala māka'i: "police house" = police station
hale pule: "pray house" = church
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