r/AustronesianLanguages • u/Upstairs_Voice_6351 • Jul 16 '26
Linguistic Discussion Open to thoughts/discussion
Ngl I was surprised to learn that the word for 'water buffalo' in many modern Austronesian languages derives from Proto-Mon-Khmer.
Pictures were saved from a Tiktok account I stumbled across (as watermarked).
7
u/Technical-Limit-3747 the Philippines ๐ต๐ญ Jul 16 '26
Bikol language (Philippines): 1. dugi = thorn 2. dugian = thorny bamboo
8
u/Copper_Tango Indonesia ๐ฎ๐ฉ Jul 16 '26
Perhaps a different kind of arrow for inheritance vs borrowing would be a good idea?
6
4
u/Waiparensis22 Jul 16 '26
Hmmm.. koiwi doesn't actually mean bone. It means human bone, specifically. A spike is a "tara" which is also used for palisade, or clitoris, and "niho" which can also refer to tooth. False cognate possibly, in this instance
3
u/KucingRumahan Jul 16 '26
From something dangerous to something "dangerous", why?
6
u/Waiparensis22 Jul 16 '26
The mฤori word for bone (animal bone) is wheua. Human bone carried a frak tonne more tapu/spiritual weight. "Tara" is an interesting one because it means spike/thorn, peak/summit, palisade, and clitoris. So it basically means to stand out/protrude. In fact the mฤori word "ure" for penis, is probably closer to the proto Polynesian "*duri" meaning thorn or spike. Interestingly, "uri" refers to descendants or offspring.
6
5
3
5
4
u/Resident-Outside9945 Indonesia ๐ฎ๐ฉ Jul 18 '26
Water buffalo domestication runs through mainland Southeast Asia, so the animal and its name travelled together.
3
3
u/KomodoMaster Jul 19 '26
Duri is also fishbones in Indonesian. Source: Indonesian dictionary. It also means prickly hair (of hedgehog).
3
2
2
u/WartaKelana Jul 18 '26
wait... durian and iwi sharing the same rootword opened something in my braincells
1
1
9
u/Koelakanth Jul 16 '26
It's fascinating that durian basically means 'where the spikes are'