"weather" in Hawaiian?

[Laurence Horn]

On Sep 6, 2011, at 7:40 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> 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!)
>

On ABC, they claimed the research pointed to Hawaii and Alaska (presumably avalanches don't count), with Vermont, Michigan, and I think Minnesota in the next three slots.  And this was just after Irene, so they did mention the irony (I think that counts as actual irony, subject to correction) of Vermont being so identified just after the segment on the severe flooding.

LH

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