Re: Caucasian phonologies and orthographies

Andreas Johansson wrote at 2004-03-15 18:20:17 (+0100)
 > Quoting Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>:
 >
 > > I was thinking of words like "sherpa", "tsampa" etc.  Are they
 > > Tibetan or Nepalese, I dunno exactly, but anyway, "shtempa" would
 > > look nice among them: tsampa, shtempa ! (roasted barley flour, I
 > > don't like you !)
 > >
 > > True, it's also much alike "Stemper" (what is it ?)
 >
 > There's, to the extent my Duden can be trusted, no such word in
 > (Modern Standard High) German, but could very well be as far as
 > phone*ic shape is considered.
 >
 > (For the Germanically ignorant, it would be pronounced ['StEmp6].)
 >
 > "Sherpa" is Nepalese, I'm fairly sure. Don't recognize "tsampa".
 >
 >

As Philippe said, it's roasted barley flour, the staple food of Tibet.
I imagine it's a Tibetan word - I mean, certainly it's a Tibetan word,
but I don't know for sure that it's Tibetan in origin.  For what it's
worth I can't find it in the one Sino-Tibetan etymological dictionary
I know online, but I can't find anything like it in a Nepali
dictionary either.

I recently came across a page describing how to eat it
http://tsampa.org/tibetan/tsampa/theory_and_practice/
(There's an entry from Jäschke's dictionary on the page above that
one.)

I've never had it Tibetan-style myself, although I once bought a small
loaf of bread supposedly made from the stuff at a health-food store.