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From: iandale@superior.carleton.ca (Ian Dale)
Subject: Re: Most Internation Written Word
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Date: Tue, 14 Feb 1995 15:19:15 GMT
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Tim Behrend (asi_beh@ccnov2.auckland.ac.nz) wrote:
: In article <D3ox29.4DH@cunews.carleton.ca>, iandale@superior.carleton.ca (Ian Dale) says:
: >
: >Tim Behrend (asi_beh@ccnov2.auckland.ac.nz) wrote:
: >
: >: Mango, from Malay mangga, 
: >
: >Or perhaps we should say from Tamil, where 'maankaay' ... means literally
: >"mango vegetable" and refers to the unripe fruit, ...  'maampaRam'
: > (R=retroflex r) means literally "mango fruit" (what most of us would
: > call a "mango", I suppose), and 'maamaram' means "mango tree".   I
: > think that the 'maa(n)' part ... is scarcely used on its own.



: 	Why one would expect the word mango to be more likely to
: 	come from the distant Tamil word 'maa()' (a scarecely used 
: 	root) or 'maampaRam' rather than the nearly identical 
: 	Malay 'mangga' identified by etymological dictionaries
: 	escapes me.



At the risk of belabouring the obvious, I might point out that I cited
the Tamil form 'maankaay' first in my original posting precisely
because it is the form from which I believe (following conventional
wisdom) the Malay 'mangga' to be derived. I then provided the Tamil
form 'maampaRam' because it is the form from which your second
original example (Javanese 'pelem') was taken. I note from
Wilkinson, by the way (Malay-English Dictionary, 1959), that there is
another Javanese form 'mempelem' which also apparently means "mango"
and which represents a closer approximation to the Tamil. I went into
the composition of the Tamil words precisely because this composition
is lost in the Austronesian languages -- i.e., they borrowed the words
as units. This is what enables the Javanese to abbreviate the form to
what is etymologically merely "fruit" while still maintaining the
"mango" meaning.

As for etymological dictionaries, the OED and others seem to agree on
a borrowing chain that runs Tamil-Malay-(Portuguese)-English. I see
little disagreement that the original source for this word is Tamil. I
also refer you to Wilkinson cited above for more Tamil words borrowed
by Malay (e.g., directly above mempelem I see mempelai "bridegroom" ( < Tamil
maapillai)).


:        here are a few of the
:	variants for mango that appear among languages of the 
:
:	Austronesian family in Indonesia.  
:
:	ampalam, ampelam, amplem, balamo, empelam, hampalam, hampelom,
:	kapelam, kapelom, manggapalam, mempelam, pelem, mo, morpolom, 
:	palam, etc.
:
:	These all appear to be cognates;

On the contrary; these all appear to be borrowings, mostly of 
'maampaRam' "mango-fruit". I note that 'manggapalam' appears to be a
conflation of both source words 'maankaay' and 'maampaRam'. I have no
idea, of course, what proportion of the current phonological variation
that appears to be reflected in the spelling is due to phonological
change that has taken place since the time when the lexical item was
borrowed and how much has to do with the phonological structure of the
borrowing language itself.

By the way, I note from the Dravidian Etymological Dictionary (p 319)
that the Sanskrit for "mango tree" is 'maakanda-'. Since 'maa' is not
an Indo-European root, that looks like an early borrowing out of
Dravidian too, albeit in the opposite geographical direction to Malay.
I also note that none of those three "mango" words (mangga, pelem,
mempelem) are listed in Zoetmulder's (1982) Old Javanese - English
Dictionary. Whether I can take that as a hint that these words came
into the languages of that part of the world after the period of the
Old Javanese texts or not, I don't know.
