Hoklo-Hokkien loanwords in Indo./Malay and v.v.
Re: Hoklo-Hokkien loanwords in Indo./Malay and v.v.
Bô lah, tú-ah-pat-khì·-bô-kuí-só·-cāi niā. Di Jakarta ada banyak orang Jawa, dan bahasa Jakarta banyak serapan dari bahasa Jawa, jadi hanya tau2 dikit doang deh... hehe...
Re: Hoklo-Hokkien loanwords in Indo./Malay and v.v.
The Forum has gone quiet for a while. Presumably everyone is hard at work elsewhere 
.
I was looking at my character-Douglas on the weekend and stumbled on this, to my amazement!
p9: báh (C.),= boáh. báh-á, the crocodile.
niuc and I have discussed the word before in private correspondence. I think, at the time, we both (without explicitly saying it) assumed that the Malay/Indonesian word "buaya" was the original (http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buaya), and that it was borrowed from there into Hokkien. I certainly have always thought this, because the rivers of Malaysia and Indonesia would have far more crocodiles than those of Fujian (I would imagine).
Unfortunately, the English Wikipedia article en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodile doesn't say *anything* about distribution. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltwater_crocodile does state that they are well-known in S.E.Asia, without mentioning China at all (not even coastal southern China).
So, a borrowing from Malay/Indonesian to Hokkien seems way more likely than vice versa.
And then I find this remarkable entry in Douglas.
Would it one of those rare cases of Malay borrowings into S.E.Asian Hokkien making it back to Fujian? Seems so unlikely, as there would be so little need to talk about these animals, and even then, I would have thought that there would be sinitic cognates based on 鱷.
.I was looking at my character-Douglas on the weekend and stumbled on this, to my amazement!
p9: báh (C.),= boáh. báh-á, the crocodile.
niuc and I have discussed the word before in private correspondence. I think, at the time, we both (without explicitly saying it) assumed that the Malay/Indonesian word "buaya" was the original (http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buaya), and that it was borrowed from there into Hokkien. I certainly have always thought this, because the rivers of Malaysia and Indonesia would have far more crocodiles than those of Fujian (I would imagine).
Unfortunately, the English Wikipedia article en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodile doesn't say *anything* about distribution. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltwater_crocodile does state that they are well-known in S.E.Asia, without mentioning China at all (not even coastal southern China).
So, a borrowing from Malay/Indonesian to Hokkien seems way more likely than vice versa.
And then I find this remarkable entry in Douglas.
Would it one of those rare cases of Malay borrowings into S.E.Asian Hokkien making it back to Fujian? Seems so unlikely, as there would be so little need to talk about these animals, and even then, I would have thought that there would be sinitic cognates based on 鱷.
Re: Hoklo-Hokkien loanwords in Indo./Malay and v.v.
Here are another two articles which more or less confirm the absence (or not particular abundance) of crocodiles in China.
http://www.abc.net.au/nature/croc/map.htm
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/top ... -abundance:
"Crocodiles are found mainly in the lowland, humid tropics of the Northern and Southern hemispheres. The “true crocodiles” (family Crocodylidae) occur in most of Africa south of the Sahara, Madagascar, India, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, the East Indies, northern Australia, Mexico and Central America, the West Indies, and northern South America. In the family Alligatoridae, most caimans are confined to the tropical areas of Central and South America, though the ranges of the broad-snouted caiman (Caiman latirostris) and Jacaré caiman (C. yacare) extend into temperate areas of South America. The American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) and the Chinese alligator (A. sinensis) also occur in temperate regions. In the family Gavialidae, the Indian gavial (Gavialis gangeticus) is found in Pakistan, northern India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar."
So, even if they do occur in China, it's not their "primary" area of occurance, making a borrowing from Hokkien to Malay very unlikely, IMHO.
http://www.abc.net.au/nature/croc/map.htm
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/top ... -abundance:
"Crocodiles are found mainly in the lowland, humid tropics of the Northern and Southern hemispheres. The “true crocodiles” (family Crocodylidae) occur in most of Africa south of the Sahara, Madagascar, India, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, the East Indies, northern Australia, Mexico and Central America, the West Indies, and northern South America. In the family Alligatoridae, most caimans are confined to the tropical areas of Central and South America, though the ranges of the broad-snouted caiman (Caiman latirostris) and Jacaré caiman (C. yacare) extend into temperate areas of South America. The American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) and the Chinese alligator (A. sinensis) also occur in temperate regions. In the family Gavialidae, the Indian gavial (Gavialis gangeticus) is found in Pakistan, northern India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar."
So, even if they do occur in China, it's not their "primary" area of occurance, making a borrowing from Hokkien to Malay very unlikely, IMHO.
Re: Hoklo-Hokkien loanwords in Indo./Malay and v.v.
Hi, Sim. Guess what CROCODILE is in Formosan Hoklo?
http://taigi.fhl.net/dict/search.php?DE ... ic&graph=2
http://iug.csie.dahan.edu.tw/q/THq.asp
Both the Iûⁿ Ún'giân 台文中文 dictionary and the 台日大 list cognates of "boyo" as well as cognates of 鱷魚. 䱅 is the kanji associated with the former. I bet there is a Chinese classic that uses 䱅 in a sentence, proving that 䱅 is a Sinitic root meaning CROCODILE, etc.
Also interesting:
http://taigi.fhl.net/dict/search.php?DE ... ic&graph=2
So, "Sù-bí-boa̍h" / "Sù-lí-boa̍h" -- most likely corrupted forms of the Javanese or Malay name "Surabaya" -- were used in Formosan Hoklo up into Japanese times to refer to JAVA / JAWA along with other terms: Jiáu'oa, Sampalang, Kalâpa. (~ Jawa, Semarang, Kelapa)
And the name Surabaya is associated with suro (SHARK) and boyo (CROC).
As for a Sinitic root, I wouldn't expect there to be a "proto-Sinitic" word for an animal unknown in Northern China. Cantonese does use the word 鱷魚. My guess is that that's a recent loan from points north. Boondock Cantonese has a different word, I bet.
http://taigi.fhl.net/dict/search.php?DE ... ic&graph=2
http://iug.csie.dahan.edu.tw/q/THq.asp
Both the Iûⁿ Ún'giân 台文中文 dictionary and the 台日大 list cognates of "boyo" as well as cognates of 鱷魚. 䱅 is the kanji associated with the former. I bet there is a Chinese classic that uses 䱅 in a sentence, proving that 䱅 is a Sinitic root meaning CROCODILE, etc.
Also interesting:
http://taigi.fhl.net/dict/search.php?DE ... ic&graph=2
So, "Sù-bí-boa̍h" / "Sù-lí-boa̍h" -- most likely corrupted forms of the Javanese or Malay name "Surabaya" -- were used in Formosan Hoklo up into Japanese times to refer to JAVA / JAWA along with other terms: Jiáu'oa, Sampalang, Kalâpa. (~ Jawa, Semarang, Kelapa)
And the name Surabaya is associated with suro (SHARK) and boyo (CROC).
As for a Sinitic root, I wouldn't expect there to be a "proto-Sinitic" word for an animal unknown in Northern China. Cantonese does use the word 鱷魚. My guess is that that's a recent loan from points north. Boondock Cantonese has a different word, I bet.
Re: Hoklo-Hokkien loanwords in Indo./Malay and v.v.
I've been meaning to post for a few days about this, because there is a famous story associated with the T'ang crocodiles in the 韓 river (Han Kong) in the Teochew area. The T'ang writer Han Yü 韓愈 was supposed to have written a letter to ask a crocodile to stop terrorising the people of the district, and thrown it in the river for the crocodile to read. The name of the letter is called the 祭鱷魚文.
Those friendly folks at the Epoch Times have kindly put the whole thing online for us
http://www.epochtimes.com/b5/6/12/31/n1574923.htm
Those friendly folks at the Epoch Times have kindly put the whole thing online for us
http://www.epochtimes.com/b5/6/12/31/n1574923.htm
Re: Hoklo-Hokkien loanwords in Indo./Malay and v.v.
Hi amhoanna and Ah-bin,
Thanks for your replies. Hmmm... I'm really puzzled by this now.
So, crocodiles were certainly known in S.E. China, and there's no reason to think that Teochews and Hokkiens don't have a non-Malay word for it. So, now the similarity between the Hokkien and Malay words is the thing which is puzzling, as I consider it very unlikely that Malay borrowed it from Hokkien.
Thanks for your replies. Hmmm... I'm really puzzled by this now.
So, crocodiles were certainly known in S.E. China, and there's no reason to think that Teochews and Hokkiens don't have a non-Malay word for it. So, now the similarity between the Hokkien and Malay words is the thing which is puzzling, as I consider it very unlikely that Malay borrowed it from Hokkien.
Re: Hoklo-Hokkien loanwords in Indo./Malay and v.v.
Wow, so it's even in Douglas' & Taiwanese dictionaries! Referring to Wikipedia, it seems that "buaya" (and its variant "buwaya", "buhaya" etc) is indeed Austronesian. May be it was a loanword into Hokkien since several hundred of years ago? May be some brought back a croc or its skin and with it the Malay/Austronesian name?
Re: Hoklo-Hokkien loanwords in Indo./Malay and v.v.
Hi niuc,
Possible, but Ah-bin's story is from the T'ang Dynasty. In the time between then and now, German and English have diverged from one another to the extent which they have. That makes the similarity betwwen the Malay and Hokkien words stii remarkable.
Of course, the T'ang Dynasty Teochews might have used a totally different word, and the current Hokkien/Teochew(?) one might indeed have been more recently borrowed - i.e. In or after the 18th century.
Possible, but Ah-bin's story is from the T'ang Dynasty. In the time between then and now, German and English have diverged from one another to the extent which they have. That makes the similarity betwwen the Malay and Hokkien words stii remarkable.
Of course, the T'ang Dynasty Teochews might have used a totally different word, and the current Hokkien/Teochew(?) one might indeed have been more recently borrowed - i.e. In or after the 18th century.
Re: Hoklo-Hokkien loanwords in Indo./Malay and v.v.
多謝「堂人」切手電照光 hit 号古早个代誌！The T'ang writer Han Yü 韓愈 was supposed to have written a letter to ask a crocodile to stop terrorising the people of the district, and thrown it in the river for the crocodile to read. The name of the letter is called the 祭鱷魚文.
(Tosiạ "Tn̉glảng" chiat chiútiạn chiòkuiⁿ hit'họ kó·cá ẻ tạicì.)
BTW 切 chiat is the general TW Hoklo word for TO TURN ON AN ELECTR(ON)IC DEVICE, but I'm pretty sure this is a Taiwanism, most likely of the Nipponese persuasion. How do all U guys say it in your styles of Hoklo?
手電 = FLASHLIGHT, but it means something else in Bagansiapiapi!
As for the crocs, maybe there was a warmer epoch when the rivers of the 中原 Tionggoân teemed with crocodiles and other creatures, such as Southeast Asians.
Re: Hoklo-Hokkien loanwords in Indo./Malay and v.v.
Sim, the story mentioned by Ah-bin used 鱷 "gòk", which I never heard in daily usage. I think it is possible that the term 鱷 was "the" word for croc including in Hokkien (I mean the language spoken by our ancestors) that time, and after croc became extinct around that area, the word was forgotten and later after contact with SEAsia, its Austonesian word was loaned. Or other possibilites...
Amhoanna, 手電 is also flashlight in Bagansiapiapi. I think it means mobile phone in some variants (手電話 in Bâ-gán, or sometimes 手機).
We say 開 khui = to switch on, 禁 kìm = to switch off. 開禁 khui-kìm is a switch.
這泡火个開禁佇佗？
cit-pha-hé· ê-khui-kìm tī-tô·?
Where is the switch for this lamp?
Amhoanna, 手電 is also flashlight in Bagansiapiapi.
I think it means mobile phone in some variants (手電話 in Bâ-gán, or sometimes 手機).We say 開 khui = to switch on, 禁 kìm = to switch off. 開禁 khui-kìm is a switch.
這泡火个開禁佇佗？
cit-pha-hé· ê-khui-kìm tī-tô·?
Where is the switch for this lamp?