HWotD

Today's Hawaiian Word is:

mahalo = thank you
"mah-hah-low"

I choose the word of the day by what Hawaiian word pops into my head at the time, and this one very appropriately was the first word I thought of :)

I heard a great story about this word from the tour guide Ku'ulei who took us from one part of Pearl Harbor to the other part where the USS Missouri is. She was very entertaining and told us this story about one of the most famous Hawaiian words.

Apparently back in the day when Hawaii was becoming a famous tourist destination, the Hawaiian culture gurus decided to try to teach the tourists a little bit of Hawaiian and encourage them to clean up after themselves. They decided that a good way to promote both objectives would be to put the word "mahalo" on garbage cans. Legend has it that the tourists thought the meaning of the word to be trash instead of thank you. The same tourists, when thanked by their taxi drivers, or waitresses, or beach boy, or local Hawaiian, thought the Hawaiian was saying trash.

Anyway, aloha and mahalo have very significant meanings in Hawaiian, as described in this article.