Re: A curious wordlist

Hi,

  philip.newton@GMAIL.COM wrote
  >>"Pee,  The nose.", cf. Cant. é¼», bei6

  Of course, Mandarin is closer on that one, bi2

  -Leon

Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> wrote:  On 3/27/07, Roger Mills  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 æ—¥, 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. é ­, tau4
"Pee,  The nose.", cf. Cant. é¼», 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





---------------------------------
Expecting? Get great news right away with email Auto-Check.
Try the Yahoo! Mail Beta.