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Re: left and right

From:andrew <hobbit@...>
Date:Monday, April 7, 2008, 4:44
On Sat, 05 Apr 2008, ROGER MILLS wrote:
> Michael Poxon wrote: > >I don't know if this is true for the other islands, but on the Big > > Island of Hawai'i, you don't use compass directions, but "Mauka" > > (towards the mountain, usually inland) and "Makai" (towards the > > sea). > > ma- either 1. adjective marker or 2. < *mai directional marker > uka < *qutan, Ml. hutan 'forest' > kai < *tasik, Ml. id. 'sea' >
That surprised me enough to get out my proto-polynesian word list (Biggs, 1979). A librarian very kindly made me a photocopy of it from the microfiche some years ago. I dusted it off and fruitlessly hunted through it. It's not in order -- note to self, organise and find a ring-binder going spare to keep this within for the short term. I checked the list I had made from it some years ago on my computer, and found, without the comparisons that Biggs had: Ma9uga 'mountain' 9uta 'inland (from shore), shore, land (from sea)' tahi 'sea' mai 'toward speaker' No listing of ma- found. What puzzled me was I could identify mauka as cognate with maunga in NZMaori. Did a split occur between ma9uga and 9uta? so one word has a velar and the other a dental? or were they always separate words. Sadly my list does not note where the final consonant has been lost from the Austronesian parent of Polynesian languages. Shame that. - andrew. -- Andrew Smith -- hobbit@griffler.co.nz -- http://hobbit.griffler.co.nz/homepage.html "If you are gonna rebell you have to wear our uniform."

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Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>