Scrabble’s Two Letter Words – Ka, Ki, La & Li

Ka

The life force, especially to an Ancient Egyptian.  See also, Ba.

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Ki

The life force, especially to a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine, or martial arts.  More commonly referred to as Qi, Ch’i or Chi.  I’m bound to talk about Qi when we get to the letter ‘Q’.  So, instead, let’s talk about:

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Kī

A flowering palm of the asparagus family, spread throughout South East Asia and Oceania by Polynesian settlers.  Wikipedia lists ten other common names for the Kī (which is the Hawaiian name for the plant) including ‘Good Luck Plant’ and ‘Cabbage Palm’.  But Google tells us that the palm is most commonly referred to as the Tī Plant (For the purposes of Scrabble, don’t worry about getting Kī and Tī confused.  Tī is also a legitimate Scrabble word.  See also, Do.)

The Kī is a versatile plant, providing Islanders with a source of wood and berries.  Their roots are a rhizome food source filled with saccharine, and their leaves can be used as plates or as a wrap to cook meat in for added flavor.  And since the palms are very good at dispersing water, they’re often used to make raincoats and to thatch houses.  Though, you’re most likely to recognize the palm fronds as the ‘grass’ that hula skirts are made of.  I suppose that would mean hula skirts are edible.  I wonder how many hula dancers chew on their skirts when they get nervous?

Kī is also used in herbal medicines, or as an alcohol called ‘okolehao.  Or perhaps you own a tī plant in your garden?  Certain cultivars of tī feature both striking colors, and a fragrant odor.  Though they look like small ferns (and rarely berry) when one regularly trims them.

Obviously, when a plant is this important to your culture, it takes on a mythos of its own.  In one Fijian story, a commoner named Na Qalita went fishing and caught an eel, only to discover that the eel was the great spirit-chief, Tui Namoliwai.  The eel offered many gifts if Na Qalita let him go,  including protection in war, divine help when participating in throwing games, protection while sailing, and to help him acquire women.  Na Qalita turned down all these offers, since Tui Namoliwai was to be an offering to a storyteller.  When Tui Namoliwai offered to grant the Fijian people the ability to fire walk, and the ability to eat the roots of the tī plant, though, Na Qalita agreed, and released the eel.  In a sense, the Fijian people considered the tī plant to be so important, that being able to eat it was a sort of superpower, on the same level as being able to walk on fire.

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La

A note in the solfège system.  See Do.

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Li

A Chinese unit of measurement equal to half a kilometer.  At one time, Westerners referred to it as a ‘Chinese Mile’.

Historically, the length of a Li was used as approximation depending on how difficult the land was to walk.  That’s because a li was composed of 1,500 chi, or steps.  If we were to walk on a flat road, we would take solid strides.  A rocky mountain path of one li in length, however, would be a shorter distance, composed of 1,500 small and careful steps (Keep in mind, though, that this is a simplification of how the measurement was standardized over time.  Like the English mile, the official length of the li was often altered because of some political need for whatever government was in power.) If we were to directly translate the Tao Te Ching, then we would say that “A journey of a thousand li / starts from beneath one’s feet.”  It would end, of course, with your 150,000th chi.  Sometime in the late 1940s, the li linked up with the metric system and standardized to 500 meters, and the chi became one-third of a meter (which makes the chi a measurement with a repeating decimal.)

The picture above showcases the second largest building in the world, the Taipei 101, which is a little over one li in height.  I suppose we could prove that by getting Spider-Man to walk along the length of it.  Five hectometers is long distance to walk, but a quick trip for a car to drive.  Longer than most track ‘dashes’, but too short for a relay run.  It’s the domain of ice skating competitions, or short bicycle and rowing contests.

I don’t think it helps to visualize the distance any, but 500 meters is also close to the length of the largest self-propelled human made object ever built: the Seawise Giant (458 meters from prow to stern).  A supertanker built to transport oil across oceans, the Seawise Giant proved inefficient, and wasn’t able to transport enough oil at any one time to justify the expense required to operate her.  She was torn apart for scrap in India in 2009.

For comparison sake, notice the ‘small’ boats hovering near the base of the Seawise Giant, and how tiny the bridge for those ships appear to be.  The Seawise Giant has a turning radius of two miles, and requires eight miles to come to a full stop.  Yet, she’s manned by a staff of forty sailors.  I’d hate to run the length of this ship if there was a fire on deck, eh?

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Are you a logophile eager to learn more?  Why don’t you head on over to the Scrabble’s Two Letter Words Page?