kalabaw

[potetjp]

I may already have told you this, but I'll repeat it all the same.

Tag. _kalabáw_ "(water) buffalo" is not entered in the following Spanish
dictionaries.
SAN BUENAVENTURA (1613) [Spanish-Tagalog]
It does not appear in the Tagalog-Spanish finder list at the end.
SB translates _búfalo_ as "anwáng" (p.125) - actually _ an vang pp_; pp
means "stress on the penultimate", but this typo is corrected in the finder
list: pc "stress on the ultimate".
SB uses the Spanish term for "cow": Span. _vaca_ "cow"  > Tag. _baca pp =
báka_, and says that this animal was unknown in the Philippines.

Francisco DE SAN ANTONIO (died 1624) [Tagalog-Spanish]
Miguel RUIZ (died 1630) [Tagalog-Spanish]
NOCEDA & SANLUCAR (1754)
NOCEDA & SANLUCAR (1860) Tagalog-Spanish part and supplement

Apparently Tag.  _kalabáw_ "(water) buffalo" is entered for the first time
in
NOCEDA & SANLUCAR (1860) Spanish-Tagalog part
"Bufalo [búfalo], ó animal que se le parece. _Calabao. pc_ [kalabáw].
_damolag pp_ [damúlag]. _anuang pc_ [anwáng]. (p.453). The last two terms
are in bold letters, which means they were obsolete in the 19th c.
If you return to the Tagalog-Spanish part, you'll see that _anwáng_ is
glossed with the Spanish form of _kalabáw: carabao_, although _calabao pc_
is not entered.

In brief, Tagalogs had water buffaloes - which they mainly called "anwáng" -
when the Spaniards arrived. Then, during the Spanish period, buffaloes must
have been imported (probably as calves) from Indochina or the Malay world
along with their local name. The latter must have sounded like _*krabáw_ to
Tagalog ears and was tagalized as _kalabáw_. In its turn _kalabáw_ was
hispanized as _carabao_.
Why this importation? Probably due to the development of husbandry and the
will to enrich the genes of the "native" buffalo race.

Jean-Paul G. POTET