interpreter

[Waruno Mahdi]

> There again we stumble on the problem of the Malay intermediary.
> Mal _kerbau_ would have given *_kalbao_ not _kalabáo [kalabáw]_.

The immediate intermediary probably was something like _*kerebau_.
There are several examples of borrowings from Malay into other
languages (particularly in Kalimantan), showing reflexes of an
anaptyctic schwa where the nuclear Malay form has an internal
consonant cluster. Beside in reflexes of _kerbau_ (that look as if
the donor had had _*kerebau_) there are similar reflexes of e.g.
_kersik_ "sand", which look as if the precursor had been _*keresik_,
etc. Also in Sumatra: the name of the port city of Perlak, etymologically
going back to a word meaning "garden" already attested in Old Malay
epigraphy of the Sri Vijaya period as _parlak_ (if I remember correctly),
and referred to by Marco Polo as _Ferlec_, is called _Peureulak_ by the
indigenous Achehnese, where _eu_ is a digraph spelling an unrounded
mid-high back vowel.

BTW, I must make a correction to what I wrote yesterday:

Kanakanavu _kraváu_ "carabao", is not Kanakanavu, but Kavalan (which
is spoken in the Northeast of Taiwan, immediately adjacent to Basay
that had been Spanish-ruled from 1624 (not 1629) till 1642. I would
like to thank Paul Li for calling my attention to this error. Paul
also let me know that the attested Kavalan word is pronounced /qabaw/.
The form I cited was from Ferrel (1969, Taiwan Aboriginal Goups, there
on p. 20), apparently noted down at a much earlier time. Paul Li also
wrote me that the word for carabao in Basay had been /kalabaw/, "perhaps
borrowed from some Philippine speakers working as Spanish sailors".

Regards,   Waruno