Re: A curious wordlist

On 3/27/07, Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> wrote:
> http://southseas.nla.gov.au/journals/parkinson/239.html
>
> Supposedly of the "natives of Sumatra", but there isn't a recognizable
> Austronesian word in sight.  I believe "sea...Hai" is Chinese.  How about
> the rest? Does anyone recognize anything? Bear in mind, it was published in
> 1773, apparently the result of one of Capt. Cook's voyages. The forms, of
> course, must be pronounced as if they were English words, so "oo" is
> apparently [u], "ee" is [i], most likely :-)))
Quite a bit of it looks rather Chinese to me. Not Mandarin, to be
sure, due to the presence of syllable-final stops, but still Chinese.

For example, look at Cantonese.

"Jet, the sun" looks like 日, jat6.
"Hoïn, The clouds." looks a bit like 雲, wan4.
"Ho,  	Rain." looks vaguely like 雨, jyu [jy]
"Lang, 	People." looks like something I had read about Hokkien, about
how it is sometimes called "lan-lang-oe" or "lan-nang-oe", with the
lang/nang meaning "people".
"Taow, 	The head.", cf. Cant. 頭, tau4
"Pee, 	The nose.", cf. Cant. 鼻, bei6
"Vacvaï, 	The eye-brows." reminds me a bit of Cant. 目 muk6 "eye" + 眉
mei4 "eyebrow".
"Tsooë,  	The mouth.", cf. Cant. 嘴, zeoi2 ("beak, snout, mouth" in Mandarin)
Tsooë toon, 	The lips.", cf. the above + Cant. 唇, seon4 (嘴唇, zui3chun2
= "lip" in Mandarin)
etc. etc.

I imagine that you'll find a Chinese dialect that's even closer.

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

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