Re: Dyirbal?

Wesley Parish wrote:

> Austronesian languages are derived from a proto-Austronesian language
> spoken
> in Taiwan around about 3 000 years ago.
Make that more like 4-5000 B.C.E (6-7000 years ago). Otherwise you've given
a very good summary of what's currently known/believed.

The residents must've got restless
> and shifted further south, until Austronesian is the world's most widely
> scattered stone-age era language family, with speakers spread from
> Madagascar
> to Easter Island and Hawai'i.  The only place the Australian languages met
> the Austronesian languages was around Darwin/Arnhem Land, where there was
> a
> scattered trading trips from Indonesia;
I imagine you're referring to the known contacts (certainly beginning early
in the C.E. if not before, and lasting up to around 1900 IIRC) with
Makassarese sailor/traders and their polyglot crews who visited that area to
collect tripang ("sea cucumber") for the Chinese market. Because of the
monsoon wind patterns, they had to hang around for about 6 months before
they could sail home; some of the loan words detected involve some very
naughty sexual practices.......(I have an article somewhere if you're
interested)

It could be that if anyone familiar with both Australian and Austronesian
(more specifically I think, Indonesian) languages took a really good look,
they might find other areas :-)  A long time ago I watched a
Natl.Georgraphic program on the Gagadu (Kakadu?) people of Cape York (?)--
it mentioned their animal totem, the sea eagle 'mara(vw)uti'-- at the time I
was researching some languages of the Timor area, and noted a word (wv)uti
'to seize, grab', with a compound .....wuti that meant, indeed, sea eagle.
Coincidence?

Reply