origin of takuri=kettle, salapi=money, gunting=scissors

Christopher Miller christophermiller at MAC.COM
Wed May 9 15:45:56 UTC 2012


I don't have any first-hand expertise to offer on these, but perhaps these pointers might lead to something interesting. 

Jean-Paul Potet has this to say à propos of salapî in his recent book Numbers and Units in Old Tagalog:

«
① Probably Tag. sálap "fees, salary" + Tag. -î. The suffix -î is evidence by other derivatives such ast Tag. bálot "wrap" ▶ balútì "(leather) armour" (SB 1613:481:peto|N&S 1860:035). ② The derivation sálap ▶ salapî may have been influenced by Ar. Aašrafii ﺍشرفي [ʔaʃrafiː] "gold coin, ducat" (Kaz. 1:1219). 
» (p. 299)

As for gunting, this word is also used in Malay. It has interesting positional correspondences with Malay runcing 'sharp' (e.g. as in bambu runcing 'sharpened bamboo lance'). It seems plausible that the two words might both go back to a proto-form *Runcing: certainly the /g/ is a fairly widespread reflex of *R and /t/ a possible reflex in some language, though my knowledge is too superficial to go beyond these observations. Maybe this will lead to something useful; if so, I would be quite happy. I have been puzzled over the possible etymological relationships between gunting, runcing, and rencong/incung (small knife used among other things to write South Sumatran script, also known as surat incung or rencong). 

Christopher Miller
Montreal QC  Canada
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