nanguy 'pig' in Akit

Thu Jun 3 14:16:58 UTC 2010

Greetings,

I'm taking a look at a book on the (Malayic) Akit speech variety (Rupat
Island, Riau Coast, Sumatra, Indonesia).  Although it is a fairly
straightforward Malay variety, not too weird lexically, phonologically or
morphologically, one word really threw me: nanguy 'pig'.  PMP *nanguy 'swim'
comes immediately to mind (cf. also PMP *babuy 'pig').  Now Malayic
innovated all PMP -*uy diphthongs to i, e.g. babi 'pig', etc.  

I do not see any phonological innovations in Akit which could have produced
such a diphthong, but neither can I imagine a semantic path from a possibly
pre-Malayic, substratal nanguy 'swim' to 'pig'.  

All that comes to me is Flo in the 70's sitcom Mel, saying, "When pigs fly!"

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Karl Anderbeck

National University of Malaysia 

Reference: Umar, Said Mahmud, T. Nontel, Pang Cik, Burhan Yunus. 1991.
Struktur Bahasa Akit. Jakarta: Pusat Bahasa.  

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