"weather" in Hawaiian?

[Joel S. Berson]

A friend has said she had been informed (read or heard) that Hawaiian
has no word for "weather".  A very brief on-line dictionary search
found "An English-Hawaiian dictionary: with various useful tables",
by
<http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&biw=773&bih=388&tbs=cdr:1,cd_max:Dec+31_2+1969&tbm=bks&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22Harvey+Rexford+Hitchcock%22&sa=X&ei=TK1mToTyN4PC0AGN7OGdCg&ved=0CEUQ9Ag>Harvey
Rexford Hitchcock - 1887 - saying the noun is "wa" and the verb is "E
lanakila."

I suspect the claim was constructed in order to hype the pleasures of
Hawaiian weather -- nothing bad happens, it's nice all the time, so
we don't need a word for it.  Perhaps related to an assertion I heard
reported on TV news recently, that Hawaii is one of the two states
where unusual or destructive weather is rarest.  (The other is
Vermont, so we know how reliable that research is!)

BB, redeem yourself!  :-)

And can I assume that the shorter a word is, the more basic or
important it is to speakers?

Joel

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