Chamorro origins

[Waruno Mahdi]

> For what it's worth, the change kw to p happened in the Romance languages,
> e.g. Latin [akwa] stayed the same in Italian but became [apa] in Romanian.
> I haven't heard of the reverse process.

There seems to be a similar sound correspondence reflecting a much older
PE labiovelar, comp. Latin _equus_, Greek _hippo_ "horse" (Sanskrit has
something like _asva_, I think, in agreement with the kentum/satam rule).

But this has little bearing on the problem of Chamorro genetic affinities.
The *w > kw or > gw occurs sporadically in some AN languages, and they are
not more closely related to each other. In Tunjung (SE Kalimantan), there
is even a further shift, and *w is reflected as _g_ (via a pre-Tunjung *gw).

As for the "Indonesian" place of departure of one of the assumed migrations,
if I remember correctly, the authors (I don't remember which) were refering
to the Sangir-Talaud area (between Mindanao, Sulu, and North Sulawesi), which
is "Indonesian" only in a strictly geo-political sense, but perhaps more
"Philippinic" in a comparative linguistic sense....

Waruno

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