Sydney Parkinson's Savu list

[Ross Clark]

Stranger and stranger! 
The result of my quick-and-dirty check, using Mark Rosenfelder's amazing "Numbers in Over 5,000 Languages" site. (Google 'zompist" to find it.) 
"Sumatra": Chinese, Southern Min dialect
 
S. Min Xiàmén	 chit 5	 nng 33	 sã 55	 si 11	 gô 33	 lak 5	 chhit 32	 poe? 32	 kau 51	 tsap 5	
 
"Anjenga/Malabar": Dravidian, Malayalam or something very much like it.
 
Malayalam	 onnu	 rantu	 mu:nnu	 na:lu	 ancu	 a:ru	 e:lu	 ettu	 onpatu	 pattu	
 
Well, that's just the numbers 1-10, but these seem to be the best agreements. Someone else may have time to see whether it checks out further. Looks as if Parkinson really got amongst the polyglot population of Batavia during the two months they were there. But his account of "High Malay" is puzzling:

"The general language spoken at Batavia is low Malay; and it is necessary that every person, who designs to stay long there, should learn it. This language is very different from the high and proper Malay, which is spoken on the continent of India; and may be compared to the Lingua-Franca, being a compound of several other languages; viz. of Malay, Portuguese, and those of the eastern isles. A short vocabulary of each is here annexed as a specimen; as also vocabularies of the lan-guages of other nations, in the neighbourhood of Batavia, which I collected from natives of the different places, during my stay in that city."

So although this "High Malay" seems to have Dravidian numerals, is it really a pidgin? And why would people consider "proper Malay" something spoken far away in India?  

Ross Clark


________________________________

From: an-lang-bounces at anu.edu.au on behalf of Waruno Mahdi
Sent: Tue 27/03/2007 9:42 p.m.
To: An-lang at anu.edu.au
Subject: [An-lang] Re: Sydney Parkinson's Savu list



>  I tried to make sense of Parkinson's Sumatra wordlist (because, to
>my untutored
>  eye, it looked so strange), but had to give up.

It is indeed definitively not Austronesian but a language of the mainland
(probably Daic, aka Thai-Kadai) with a numeral system of partially Chinese
origin (as is the case in Daic languages).
I haven't had time to check, whether it might not actually be Thai or some
dialect of it. My first thought had actually been, that it might be a
Chinese dialect of a long-time Chinatown in Sumatra, but after a second look
(particularly the word for "two"), I realised that couldn't be, but that it
was probably Daic.

>  A VOCABULARY of the LANGUAGE spoken by the People of the Island MADAGASCAR.

this seems prima facie indeed Malagasy, although with some alien inclusions,
e.g. grimiss (spelling?) is Malay gerimis 'drizzle'. Even as loanword, Malagasy
would have made something like herimisa out of it.

>  or Anjenga, on the coast of Malabar, where he listed 'High Malay'(p 236) it

is indeed neither high nor any other Malay or even at all Austronesian, but a
language of India. I have only not been able to check yet whether it
is Malayalam,
the Dravidian language spoken on the coast of Malabar, the name of
which may have
been confused with Malay by the editors.

Anyway, thanks for the Excel lists you sent me per direct email, all downloaded
without a hitch.

All the best,
Waruno
_______________________________________________
An-lang mailing list
An-lang at anu.edu.au
http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/an-lang


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/an-lang/attachments/20070327/e68438a6/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
An-lang mailing list
An-lang at anu.edu.au
http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/an-lang