Re: Me-lah-ha

--- In cybalist@..., "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@..., "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> >
> > The other night I got a really, really bad idea:
> >
> > The Mleccha are from the Moluccas, Maluku.
> >
> > In
> >
> > http://www.irja.org/anthro/malmel1.htm
> >
> > "
> > The protoforms are: *ntiti "copper", *mamu / *maum "iron", and
> > *buLauan "gold". The two former are practically restricted to

East

> > Indonesia. The form for gold apparently originally had the
> > meaning "copper" or "bronze" when it was propagated, perhaps
> through
> > trade contacts, from Taiwan through the Phillipines into

Kalimantan

> > and Sulawesi. In the Philippines and Sulawesi, it came to
> > mean "gold", and it is under this meaning that it was dispersed
> > throughout East Indonesia, and also in West Indonesia where,

after

> > having been mostly superceded by reflexes of *emas, it is only
> still
> > attested on small islands to the west of Sumatra (Simalur,
> Sikhule),
> > and in the interior of Kalimantan (Busang, Penihing). I reported

on

> > this in the publication of 1994.
> > "
> >
> > *buLauan "copper"?
> >
> cf "mleccha" in
>
> http://aa2411s.aa.tufs.ac.jp/~tjun/sktdic/
>
> the "other" meaning "vermillion, copper" (and I won't comment on

the

> state of mind of those people who handled the former, a nasty

mercury

> compound)
>
> and the whole loha = copper discussion.

(Mumble-mumble, blah-blah, talking to himself):

As to *ml-, *bl-, *pl-, and metals, there's also Gk. molybdos, Latin
plumbum "lead", generally assumed to be loaned from a Mediterranean
substrate language. Re-assume further east!

Da. bly, German blei "lead" are thought to be loaned from Celtic (O.
Irish luaide < *louadia:-, the p- lost in Celtic.


I must admit, this remark worried me:
"
Their word for "sailing boat for long-distance navigation", *peDaHu /
*paDaHu, is well represented along the route route from the Bismarcks
till Polynesia, as well as in Dravidian languages of South India.
This suggests that they were the ones who introduced long-distance
navigation to both areas. Stone constructions reminiscent of those of
Polynesia in several respects can be found in East Indonesia
(particularly in Nusatenggara), Java, Sumatra, and Northeast India.
"

in

http://www.irja.org/anthro/malmel2.htm

If this *peDaHu / *paDaHu is so important, it should have a reflex in
Europe. But, heureka:

the word "boat" in Germanic has been causing trouble for a long time.
It is not possible to relate the various forms in Germanic to less
than two forms, one possibly related to "bite" (??).

Austronesian (Moluccan?)loan?

And BTW

Da. blik, German Blech "tin (ie sheet metal)" supposedly related
to 'blink' etc since it shines.

How about black vs Gk melas "black" (for some reason people then
thought black and shiny was the same)?

>
>
>
> > Torsten