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Shady Austronesian Linguistics (Waponi Woo dept.)

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Tuesday, July 18, 2000, 4:09
Chollie wrote:
> Might I suggest that we eliminate approximants? For instance, r could >be deleted, perhaps coloring neighboring vowels (like in Boston English)
and
>l could be velarized - with subsequent monophthongization of diphthongs? I >think that would take us closer to CVCVCV.
I think the gods of Proto Polynesian would permit loss of r (indeed, it happened-- merged with l). Why not velarized? Poly-Latino with an east Eur. accent.
> What might be some core vocabulary for the area of Waponi Woo (see the >map at the URL below)?
Coconuts and more coconuts. Useful palm trees. Sugarcane (rum!!). Breadfuit (yuck). Lots of good fish. Tasty grubs (better if cooked, I'm told). Taro, yam, sweet potato. Pigs and dogs. Clothing made of bark cloth, not as scratchy as it sounds (could be used as paper too, probably).
> > According to some clues given by the film, the island of Waponi Woo
is
>probably somewhere in the area shown in this map: > >http://members.aol.com/waponi/gif/map.gif > > The arrow on the map indicates where Joe's ship wrecked.
Apparently quite handy to Tahiti. Probably recently settled in the centuries BCE, and lots of chances for contact with other islands. I checked the Waponi website. Is this movie for real, or a Borgesian fantasy? If real, how available is it-- my local Blockbuster maybe? Comedy, Drama or what?? (It seems to be right in line with out recent discussion of camp.)