Re: CHAT: Sakatda Ka Kadomo (was: CHAT: Anglicisms)

Barry Garcia wrote:
-----<snip>-----
>
>You know a lot about the ancient culture. Thanks for sharing, i was
>going to ask if you knew anything about the ancient culture =).
>Anyway, whats interesting about the penis pellet insertion is that
>the Yakuza (me thinks) used to do the same thing. I think i will
>name them "From the mountains" in my conculture. I'm also thinking
>about using the type of government that the Malay descended tribes
>used. I do have in front of me an old book on Philippine history
>that does share quite a bit about the pre-hispanic culture, so i
>can get a lot of the basic cultural stuff like religion from that.
>Ay.....reading the section on the negritos, the book isnt very
>positive! Anyway..
A good book is one called "Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine
Culture and Society" written by the late William Henry Scott and
which was published in 1994 after his death in 1993. He was a
leading scholar in prehispanic Philippines, and in the book he has
attempted to produce an ethnography based on sources from the early
years of Spanish colonization. It does not attempt to reconstruct
that society by consideration of present Philippine societies, or of
features believed to be common to all Austronesian peoples. Nor does
it seek similarities with neighboring cultures in Southeast Asia.
Rather, it seeks to answer the question: What did the Spaniards
actually have to say about the Filipino people when they first met
them?


-----<snip>-----
>>
>Oooo good stuff. I started constructing the conculture. The people
>are mixed ethnically between the Negritos and the Taga-bundoks (or,
>in my conlang: Jaka-Butdok). It's kind of a lost tribe type thing
>where the Malaysians mixed in with the  Negrito tribes and
>eventually the tribe is a mix of features. Also, thanks for the
>info on the language the negritos speak. I wasn't sure if it was
>something else or if it was in fact Austronesian.
Below is an excerpt from another book, "The Philippines in the 6th
to 16th Centuries" by E.P.Patanne, describing what is believed to be
the reason why the Negritos speak Austronesian languages.

"Studies have shown that the tropical rainforests are 'carbohydrate
deserts', which could account for the Negrito's short stature. When
the Austronesians came, they introduced a source of carbohydrates in
rice which the early Negritos must have found much to their liking.
While the rainforests could provide protein food through game, the
food supply was uncertain. Growing rice was a more stable source of
food.

"Headland and Reid saw the Negritos getting in touch with the
Austronesian speakers, who must have put up the staple as 'payment'
for assistence in clearing the forest and turning the land into a
swidden patch or rice field. This must have brought the Negritos
closer to the Austronesian speakers.

"Reid saw a time when Negrito children would grow up learning the
Austronesian tongue, and after two generations, the original Negrito
languages would fall into disuse.

"And this could account for the fact the Negritos today speak more
than 25 distinct languages classified as Austronesian - the
prevailing view is that Negritos speak the language of their closest
non-Negrito neighbor. They had an original tongue but this had been
lost.

"Reid, who describes the Negrito languages as 'creolized
Austronesian' has searched for some unique Negrito terms in the
current languages of the Northern Alta, Southern Alta, and Arta,
little-known negrito tongues spoken by relatively small groups in
Quezon province, which have survuved an Austronesian invasion.

"In a paper detailing his search, Reid has come up with terms from a
basic vocabulary of part of the environment shared exclusively among
Negrito languages possible of pre-Austronesian times.

"'These forms,' he wrote, 'are substantial evidence of an early
pidgin or trade language, developed by the Negritos to facilitate
communication with immigrating Austronesians.'

"He has found that Negrito terms for snake, dog, fire, hair, man,
woman, child, sun, star, rain, etc.. and environmental items like
abacca, rattan, coconut, betel leaf, etc. continue to be shared by
Negrito languages in close proximity. In brief, he believed that
while the old Negrito languages lost much of their vocabularies,
they retained many basic terms.

"He has found that some Negrito languages have retained archaic
features not found in most other Philippine languages, but which
were of an early daughter language of Proto-Austronesian. That such
archaic forms are present in Negrito languages indicate they had
picked these up from non-Negrito people speaking the proto-anguage.
'It is these forms which provide unequivocal support for our theory
that a number of Negrito groups adopted these proto-languages as
their own long ago,' Reid stated, 'before the subfamily with which
those Negrito languages are now associated had begun to
differentiate into the daughter languages we recognize today.'"

I hope you can use that for something as well.

-kristian- 8)