Hawaiian meli

[H.M.Hubey]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Lyle Campbell wrote:
>
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> Ross Clark's example of Hawaiian -meli- 'honey' as a loanword from Greek
> via classically-educated missionaries translating the Bible is a very nice
> one, as Larry Trask pooints out.  Larry notes that it ruins one of his
> favorite examples of chance resemblance, but becomes a particularly
> interesting example of borrowing.  I suppose you could sort of raise the
> ante on interestaing cases of chance resemblance and borrowing by throwing
> Maori -mieri- 'honey' into the mix.  A comparison of Hawaiian -meli- and
> Maori -mieri- (bother the -i- vowel difference) might seem to suggest a
> Polynesian cognate set (throw in Niuean -meli- 'heney' as well, also
> apparently from Greek), but the Maori word is actually a French loanword
> (from French -miel- 'honey'), courtesy apparently of early French Catholic
> missionizing activities in New Zealand, which soon faded in the country.
> (There are not many French loans in Maori, but a favorite is -wi:wi:-
> 'French' < French -oui- 'yes').  As Larry Traks points out, this -meli- /
> -mieri- false cognate is no longer a case of sheer accidental similarity,
> in that both are from Indo-European languages, but we still have accident
> to thank for it in a way, in that by sheer happenstance Hawiian ended up
> with a Greek form and Maori with a French one (which happen to be related
> languages), not something that would have been expected.
 
These are nice examples. But that is like the fisherman's game. The one
that
got away was the biggest of them all.
 
How are we to take into account all of those words that are said to be
cognate
in IE when it is quite possible that many (most) might be left over a
substratum
that was living in that neighborhood for many thousands of years and had
stabilized so that changes were taking place very slowly?
 
Of course, this is supposed to point out that false matches can occur.
True.
IT is also possible that we might miss out on real cognates. Maybe they
cancel
each other. That is why statistics is for. YOu take N measurements and
average
them, and the random deviations cancel. It also tells you how much
confidence
you can have in your results. That is a side benefit.
 
 
>         Lyle Campbell
 
--
Best Regards,
Mark
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