summary: payung, gunting, salapi, takuri

Sat May 12 08:54:08 UTC 2012

Hi all,
Briefly: The consensus so far on payung is that it is probably a Malay loan
and that the primary meaning is 'umbrella' or 'parasol', and other senses
are metaphoric extensions of this. Many of you pointed out that *gunting* is
also in Malay and that the Visayan word is probably a Malay loan. One of
you drew attention to the correspondence with the Malay *runcing *'sharp' . As
for salapi and takuri there are some interesting theories, including
Jean-Paul Gotet "Probably Tag. sálap "fees, salary" + Tag. -î.", and the
existence of the root *taku* ('gourd') in languages of southeast Sulawesi.

*Full responses are worth reading for their detail. I have included them
below for the record (apologies if I missed any): *
*
*
Hi Piers,
Just on those examples it looks to me more like the basic meaning for
payung is 'umbrella', and the other meanings are simply metaphorical
extensions for "things that look like / function like umbrellas". The use
of payung for halos around the heads of saints supports this, since they
too 'protect' or at least are physically associated with the head, like
umbrellas. Then using it for the sun/moon is another metaphorical extension
since the sun is already metaphorically linked to the the head (cf
Indonesian/Malay mata hari) as is the moon (cf the legend of kala rau in
Bali, the giant's head, which has counterparts elsewhere, deriving
ultimately from India (can send reference, not with me now).

I think you would need to find examples of payung used for circular or
ring-shaped things in general, with nothing inside the ring/circular which
could be compared to the umbrella-head configuration, to posit
'ring-shaped' as prior. Similarly to support 'cap-shaped' as prior you
would want to find examples less easily explained in terms of metaphorical
extension than mushrooms.

I wonder if payung is a loan from Malay in Philippines lgs (cf Wolff on
Malay loans in Tagalog). Possibly an etymology p-ayung could be
investigated (from Javanese?).

best,

Adrian Clynes
***
Dear Piers,

That is a very interesting question. the "protoform" is listed
in Dempwolff (1938) as well as in Wolff (2010). In the latter
it is assigned to an unidentified "subgroup". It is surprisingly
not in Bob Blust's ACD, not even under "loanwords" or even "noise".
Whatever the case, it seems not unlikely that it is a secondary
lexical item in the respective languages where it occurs, and the
dispersal of the word was to a considerable degree (if not entirely)
the result of Malay contacts.

I did a little search on Ian Proudfoot's MCP and found it to be
ubiquitous in "Hikayat Hang Tuah" (dating after first contact with
Portuguese), but extremely rare in "Hikayat Seri Rama" (a post-
-islamisation adaption of a pre-Islamic translation of Valmiki's
"Ramayana"), and not even once in "Hikayat Bayan Budiman" (a 14th
century translation from Persian).

I would surmise in a first guess, that it emerged in Malay some
time in the 15th - 16th centuries. Will try to look around some more
to find out, whether I could find from where the word came.

In any case, the meaning of all cognates listed in Wolff (2010) is
either 'umbrella' or 'parasol'. not 'ring' or 'circle'. The umbrella
or parasol in Malay culture was not originally something to protect
one from either rain or sun, but was mainly a ceremonial symbol of
rank. royal umbrellas could be many-tiered (like the roof of a pagoda),
so that the meaning 'circle' may derive from the ring-formed lower
tiers. Just a guess, though.

Good luck in your search.

Best,
Waruno
***

The following could as easily represent borrowings into Yapese from the
west (Philippines?), but they are fascinatingly similar:

dagur ‘empty coconut shell used as a container’
salpiy ‘money’

Note that salpiy could be related to:

salp- ‘welfare’ (obligatorily possessed – e.g. salpeeg ‘my welfare’

Don’t know if this is of interest, but both words struck me.  As I said, my
assumption, at least for salpiy, is that it is a borrowing.  I had always
assumed dagur to be a native word, but if it is borrowed, it could be from
Palauan (and I don’t know a Palauan source) – for the matter of that,
salpiy could be from Palau which in its turn could have borrowed from the
west.

jj

John Thayer Jensen,
System Administrator, Digital Services,
The University of Auckland Business School

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http://inquietumcor.blogspot.com

***
Hi Piers,

I don't have any first-hand expertise to offer on these, but perhaps I can
give you a couple of pointers that might lead to something interesting.

Jean-Paul Potet has this to say à propos of salapî in his recent book
Numbers and Units in Old Tagalog:

«
① Probably Tag. sálap "fees, salary" + Tag. -î. The suffix -î is evidence
by other derivatives such ast Tag. bálot "wrap" ▶ balútì "(leather) armour"
(SB 1613:481:peto|N&S 1860:035). ② The derivation sálap ▶ salapî may have
neen influenced by Ar. Aašrafii ﺍشرفي [ʔaʃrafiː] "gold coin, ducat" (Kaz.
1:1219).
» (p. 299)

As for gunting, this word is also used in Malay. It has interesting
postitional correspondences with the Malay runcing 'sharp' (as in bambu
runcing 'sharpened bamboo lances'). It seems plausible that the two words
might both go back to a proto-form *Runcing: certainly the /g/ is a fairly
widespread reflex of *R and /t/ a possible reflex in some language, though
my knowledge is too superficial to go beyond these observations. Maybe this
will lead to something useful; if so, I would be quite happy. I have been
puzzled over the possible etymological relationships between gunting,
runcing, and rencong/incung (small knife used among other things to write
South Sumatran script, also known as surat incung or rencong).

Best,

Chris Miller

==========================
Christopher Miller
43 chemin du Grand-Moulin
Deux-Montagnes QC
J7R 3C3
Canada

+1 514-568-9949

christophermiller at mac.com
==========================
***
Hi Piers,

I recognize "salapi" and "gunting" as Tagalog words.  I never heard of
"takuri" but it's listed in Carl Rubino's 2002 Tagalog dictionary, so I
suppose it is too. It reminds me of the Japanese "tokkuri" which is the
container where you pour sake from, but I think it's just a coincidence.

I thought that "gunting" was from Min Nan/Hokkien Chinese, but I can't find
it in Gloria Chan-Yap's 1977 "Hokkien Chinese borrowings in Tagalog."  But
one dictionary lists it "ka to" as the word in Min Nan. And that's quite a
stretch from the Tagalog word. An online Cantonese dictionary lists the
word 較剪 /ga:u33 tsin35/ which may be plausible.  Also, "gunting" is used in
Indonesian.

Salapi - I see it's used in Igorot & in Chamorro.  Arsenio Manuel's 1948
"Chinese elements in the Tagalog language" says:
*Salapi*. [cho( make) -pi (money) ; chai(riches, properties, money)- piek,
silver in general, riches, fortune, money; chai(money)- pit(satin.silk),
money in general; chai(money)-pi(any form of money), money in general.] *...
*
This is from a Google Books snippet and unfortunately I don't have access
to the complete work right now.

Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera's 1887 "El Sánscrito en la lengua tagalog"
(Sanskrit [words] in the Tagalog language) offers this (which I translated
from Spanish, though I caution you it's not a perfect translation!):

salapi, money: "isang salapi" a "salapi" or coin of 4 Reales fuertes  (10
realles de vellón)[Spanish currency], or it may be half hard, one escudo
[Spanish currency again]. Sanskrit "rûpya," gold or silver coins: today
"rupya" is the coin in INdia whose value varies between 2 to 2.5 pesetas,
that's to say, half hard. It's evident to me that the Sanskrit origin of
the word "salapi" which is composed of "sa," contraction of "satu" (one) in
Malay, or of "isa," in Tagalog and a corruption of the word "rupya" or
"rupia."  In this corruption, we see "R" transforming into its equivalent
"L" and from "U" to "A," a common occurence, not only in Malayo-Polynesian
languages, but also in Sanskrit itself: the final "A" which was lost
probably due to the rules of Tagalog writing, which happened to the words
"samal," "sabat," "santal," "asal," "bigal" which are in this list as being
of Sanskrit origin. This word must have been imported into Tagalog in the
form that it has now, or at least as "salapia," because the Tagalogs don't
consider it a compound word, but as the simple name of a unit of currency
in general. This appears plausible when we hear: "isang salapi," "tatlong
salapi," which mean "one salapis, three salapis," as if "salapi" when in
reality it's made up of a number and means "one lapi." Thus, then, "isang
salapi," "tatlong salapi," mean "one one-lapi," "three one-lapi," with
which I believe has been demonstrated that the word arrived in Luzon
transformed. Whether "salapi" means a special coin and money in general is
not a rare thing. And without going beyond Malayo-Polynesian languages, we
can cite an example: in Javanese "hartâ," as in Sanskrit "artha," which
properly indicates riches, treasures, goods, came to later mean a kind of
little coin of little value (1) I suppose that in Tagalog, the meaning of
money in general was secondary and consecutive to the meaning of a special
coin. In Ibanag, you count in the same way you do in Tagalog, taking
"salapi" as a unit of currency, as we have shown in the "Bahagi" article:
this way of counting money is very general in the whole archipelago.

Hope this helps in some way,

--Chris

-- 
Christopher Sundita
BA Linguistics, University of Washington 2011
Data Specialist, Google

***
Hi Piers

I don't have anything to say about *takuri *or *salapi *but *gunting *is
used for 'scissors' in Indonesian (and also used to mean 'haircut' too).

In some dialects of Malay, payung can be used for not just umbrella but
also for other kinds of protection / wrapping / cover. I once had a T shirt
bought in Ambon, eastern Indonesia with the slogan 'bulan pake payung
tortoruga batelor' 'when the moon is wearing a payung the turtles lay
eggs'. The picture on the T shirt had the moon with a kind of halo around
it.

Dunno if that helps but you got it anyway!

cheers
John Bowden
***
Hi Piers,

Here's a little data from central/southeastern Sulawesi (final consonant
loss is the rule in these languages)  I'm not aware of cognates outside of
this area, but maybe you can show me the way!  The original reference
appears to have been the bottle gourd, *Lagenaria siceraria* and to
calabashes (the dried out, ligneous shells of bottle gourds, usually put to
some use).

Pamona *taku *'gourd'
Tolaki *taku *'gourd'
Moronene *taku *'gourd for collecting palm toddy'
Padoe *taku *'a kind of plant (its fruit can be made into a jar for palm
wine)'
Mori Bawah *taku *'gourd, calabash (especially one made into a drinking
vessel)'  also in compounds such as:
**        ***taku ulu* 'cranium'   [*ulu* = head]
**        ***taku eme*  'bladder'  [*eme *= urine]
Mori Atas  *taku benu* 'coconut shell' [*benu *= coconut]
David Mead

***

Of course *gunting* is also Malay, but I don’t know its origin.  The Malay
dictionaries I looked at do not suggest any foreign source, so it doesn’t
seem like a recent borrowing.****

** **

Paul Kroeger

***

gunting is the same in Malay - A. Ogloblin

-- 
Piers Kelly | PhD Scholar
Linguistics, College of Asia and the Pacific
The Australian National University
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