salawal

[potetjp]

> This is another example of the kind of generalization that I referred to
in
> my last note to this list.  The situation you describe is not generally
true
> in the Philippines.
Dear Laurie,
How right you are! I mean "in Tagalog" or "in Katagalugan", but I say "in
the Philippines"; this is very sloppy indeed. Paris is not France.
Metro-Manila is not the Philippines.
Best regards
Jean-Paul
PS1. Has the word _sala[wal]_ "pantaloons" reached the Cordilleran
languages? I couldn't find it in your _Philippine Minor Languages_ (1971). I
met this word for the first time in Algeria in 1959 under the form
_sarwa:l_. My Classical Arabic dictionary (Hans Wehr/Milton Cowan, 1971:
408)) has _sirwa:l_ [sin-ra-waw-alif-lam] or _sirwi:l_, pl. _sara:wi:l_. In
Algeria it referred to those large, baggy, blooming trousers with such a
neat graduation of folds between the legs that they reminded us of (giant)
car gears. The word found its way into French as _saroual_ or _sarouel_, and
was part of the uniform of the French Camel Corps cruising the Sahara.
    It was a great surprise for me to discover this term had travelled as
far as Manila, where it seems to refer to ordinary trousers, although Span.
_pantalon_ < French _pantalon_ < Italian _Pantalone_ (a stock character in
the Commedia dell'Arte) is preferred. Because of its form, I guess the term
was borrowed into Arabic from another language. Panganiban (1972) lists
Persian among the languages having the term. Do we know exactly what
language it comes from?
PS2. A couple of Filipinos from Baguio has opened a turu-turo restaurant in
Paris; it didn't last long because the food was not warm enough to our
taste. Anyway. They had decorated one of their walls with what I thought at
first sight were a trident and a paddle carved in beautiful dark wood. When
I asked them where these came from, they told me they were a giant fork and
a giant spoon - indeed, apt symbols for a restaurant - and that these were
quite common in Baguio. Now, I sometimes wonder: could my mistake be the
right interpretation? Could these items now presented as a fork and a spoon
have originally been a trident and a paddle?
Dear Chaumont
I love your anecdotes.
Do Butonese have a writing system?