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Re: Polynesian family (was Re: A new Indo-European subfamily in China)

From:H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...>
Date:Sunday, December 3, 2000, 23:34
On Sun, Dec 03, 2000 at 06:16:33PM -0500, E-Ching Ng wrote:
> >How about Malay/Indonesian? They are non-tonal. Or are they regarded as a > >different language family? > > I think they're classed as Austronesian. The Polynesians were expanding > across the Pacific at around 700AD, I think, at about the same time as > the Vikings were on the seas, and they scattered their language family > all the way from Hawaii to Indonesia. Don't know why it's called > AUSTROnesian, come to think of it ... problem set and dinner calling, no > time to look it up.
Cool, thanx for the info :-)
> Before I go - I know that Japanese and Malay both have a question-marker > "ka", though in Malay I think it can go anywhere in the sentence and in > Japanese it has to be at the end. I wonder if anyone's looked at Malay > when trying to trace the origins of Japanese?
Interesting that you mention this. In Korean, the question marker is also [ka], right, Yoon Ha? Or was it [kah]? If the latter, that's even closer to Malay! Well, at least in formal Korean: e.g. [an.jON.ha.si.mi.kah] -- equiv. of "how are you doing?". Is this a coincidence, or is there some subtle connection here? T -- MAS = Mana Ada Sistem?