Numbami _kiyami_ 'dog'

[Joel Bradshaw]

At least one language on the coast south of Lae has a form cognate with
Jabêm _kiam_: Numbami _kiyami_ 'dog', the phonology of which is
compatible with a hypothesis that it was borrowed from something like
_ki(y)am_, but I'm not sure there's any need for such a hypothesis in
the first place. It seems to me there were other lookalikes in the area,
but I have yet to dig through my notes to find them. The existence of
such forms makes me a bit skeptical of the popular etymology that
attributes Micronesian forms like _kamiya_ 'dog' to English 'come here'.

Joel Bradshaw <bradshaw at hawaii.edu>

>Not sure if this is a cognate, but the Jabêm (Yabem) word for 'dog' is
kiam
or kiyam.  This Austronesian language is spoken around the Huon Gulf in
PNG
and is a Lutheran lingua franca in the area.  When I surveyed languages
south of Lae, none of the others appeared to have a cognate for this.<
Gillian Sankoff