3 ms·
In Hawaii people still use "mauka" (towards the mountains) and "makai" (towards the ocean) to describe where they are, so you might say, "it's on the makai side
by ok_dad 4y ago
In Hawaii people still use "mauka" (towards the mountains) and "makai" (towards the ocean) to describe where they are, so you might say, "it's on the makai side of downtown," to describe an area or, "go mauka from the intersection" to indicate a directional vector. They also use "windward" and "leeward" to describe sides of the island sometimes, and will give you directions from local landmarks (Zippy's is a good one, everyone tends to know where those are, or they can see the orange sign easily) to other locations.
- roughly 4y agoThere was an article posted here not too long ago which talked about decoding an old Polynesian map, which the sailors used to navigate between islands in the pacific, and it turned out to be similarly situational - the map wasn’t useful for telling objectively how far you were from one place to another, but it was very useful for navigating from one spot to another based on references to what you could see. I’ve mentioned it a few times around here, but James C Scott’s Seeing Like A State* has a fascinating look at the way language changed to prefer “overview”-type ways of describing location/distance/etc, as opposed to these more situational/embodied measures & directions which were previously commonplace. * https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780300078152 https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780300078152