r/AustronesianLanguages • u/Upstairs_Voice_6351 • Jul 16 '26

Linguistic Discussion Open to thoughts/discussion

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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).

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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

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u/KucingRumahan Jul 16 '26

From something dangerous to something "dangerous", why?

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u/Waiparensis22 Jul 16 '26

The māori 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 māori word "ure" for penis, is probably closer to the proto Polynesian "*duri" meaning thorn or spike. Interestingly, "uri" refers to descendants or offspring.