bu/bau "buffalo etc."

[potetjp]

Guillaume,

You bring me back to reality - and how right you are - but, surely, there
must have been a prehistorical time when IE *gwou- gave *gu- > *ku- in one
area, hence German Kuh, English cow, and, on the other hand, *wu- > *bu-, in
another, otherwise, how do you account for the Greek and Latin terms?

As regards whether Greeks ever sailed to the Philippines, the question is
open to debate, but immaterial to the issue.
Apart from the fact that new names are invented for new things, it is
well-known that domestic animals are often traded with their names. Also
migrant populations may apply the terms they know to new animals and plants
(see John Wolff's paper on plant names).

There is no need for Indo-Europeans to have been to the Philippines, or even
to Indochina where the words of the _kalabáw_ series are deemed to come
from. The presumed root *bu- may well have been peddled from Indo-European
areas to others. There is even the possibility that *bau- was the
full-degree root, that *bu- was its reduced degree, and that *be- [e =
schwa] was its 0 degree. There is even the possibility that *bau- was
artificially and automatically reconstructed by users who felt *bu- was a
reduced degree root. Who knows?

Jean-Paul G. POTET