m   

macaque:   long-tailed macaque

mace:   clove, mace

Borrowing. The distribution of this item is consistent with the hypothesis, first suggested to me by James T. Collins, that the pre-European spice trade of Indonesia was mediated by Brunei Malays in a commercial arc that linked Brunei (and peninsular Malay ports) with the southern Philippines and northern Moluccas. The maintenance of such contacts on a regular basis would have required sailing along the western and northern coasts of Sabah, through the Sulu Archipelago to southern Mindanao, and from there to Sangir-Talaud and northern Sulawesi before reaching the northern Moluccas. Given this interpretation the otherwise puzzling occurrence of apparent Philippine loanwords in Buli of southern Halmahera can be placed within a coherent historical context. There can be little doubt that the same network served the propagation of Islam.

Although some form of spice trade between eastern and western Indonesia (and points beyond) probably predated the arrival of Islam in island Southeast Asia by many centuries, there is little evidence for large-scale trade contacts with eastern Indonesia during the Indianization of western Indonesia (e.g. the Sriwijaya period). On present evidence, then, it appears most likely that a regular and systematic linkage of Moluccan clove and nutmeg suppliers with Bruneian or other Malay distributors developed in concert with the diffusion of Islam into Borneo, the southern Philippines and the northern Moluccas during the 14th and 15th centuries. If so, the Brunei of Pigafetta, with its lavish displays of wealth and rank, must have been a relatively nouveau-riche Islamic elaboration upon an older Indianized state in which the supporting trade base had only recently undergone a fundamental shift from a western Indonesian to an eastern Indonesian emphasis.

machete, bush knife

The Philippine forms and many others (Melanau (Mukah), Toba Batak, Rembong, possibly Ngaju Dayak) appear to be loans from Malay. Maranao paraŋ 'hand trowel, weeding tool' is assumed to be a semantically altered loan or a chance resemblance.

machete:   bolo, machete

Probably a Tagalog loan. Any word which implies metallurgy (as opposed to simple knowledge of iron ore) is almost certainly post-Proto-Philippines.

magnet

Borrowing from Malay.

maid, female servant

Probably a fairly late innovation in Western Indonesia, spread by borrowing from Malay or Javanese.

mailbox

Borrowing of Spanish buzón letter-box, pillar-box’.

maimed (as by leprosy)

Borrowing from Malay. Dempwolff (1938) reconstructed *ku(dD)uŋ ‘leprosy’.

male bird or chicken:   cock, rooster; male bird or chicken

Probably a Bunun loan in Thao, although the z : l correspondence is unexpected (Blust 1996).

male homosexual

Borrowing from Tagalog.

mango

Also Malay məmpəlam ‘mango’. Given its very restricted distribution in western Indonesia, this is assumed to be a Malay loanword.

mango: Mangifera indica

Although the mango is native to island Southeast Asia, Richards (1981) gives Iban maŋga as a borrowing of Tamil man-kay, and Wilkinson (1959:737) says the same of Malay. If this is valid then the Philippine forms must have been borrowed from Malay.

manioc:   cassava manioc

Borrowing from Malay. Cassava presumably was introduced to Southeast Asia by the Portuguese, as it is indigenous to the Amazonian region. Why the Malay name suggests a derivation from Bengal remains unclear. The manioc is an Amazonian plant, and presumably was brought to Asia by the Portuguese. The present comparison suggests that it first reached India, then Malaya before Malay merchants introduced it into the southern Philippines.

manner:   way, manner

Borrowing from Malay. Dempwolff (1934-38) included these forms together with Samoan ula-vale 'make a nuisance of oneself, make trouble' under a proposed reconstruction *ulaq 'employment, occupation', which I reject.

manner:   ways and manner

This is another of many problematic Dempwolff comparisons. The sound correspondences are irregular, and even if Ngaju Dayak had not borrowed substantially from Javanese during the Majapahit period (1293-c. 1500), a reconstruction based only on these languages could not be assigned to any of the proto-languages recognized in the ACD.

mark:   sign, signal, mark

Borrowing, probably from old or modern Javanese, where it referred to a military ensign. Dempwolff (1938) reconstructed ‘Uraustronesisch’ *tanDa ‘sign, signal, mark’, showing some of his most extreme semantic permissiveness with the Sa'a form.

market

Borrowed into Malay from Persian, presumably through Hindi, and then widely dispersed in island Southeast Asia through Malay trade contacts.

marriageable

Borrowing from Malay.

martial art (native)

Probably from Spanish arnés ‘suit of armor’.

mast, pole

Borrowing of Spanish palo ‘mast’.

master, boss

From Spanish amo ‘master of the house; master, employer; proprietor; foreman’.

mat

Borrowing from Malay. Dempwolff (1938) reconstructed ‘Uraustronesisch’ *tikaR ‘mat’ (Matte).

matching part:   pair, matching part

Borrowing of the plural form of Spanish par ‘even, equal; pair; couple’.

material:   woven bamboo walling material

Probably a Tagalog loan distribution, as shown by the irregular lack of a final consonant in both Agutaynen (expected **sawalik), and Cebuano (expected **sawáliʔ).

materials:   thin (of materials)

Presumably a back-formation from *ma-nipis, with borrowing from Malay into Javanese. Dempwolff (1938) reconstructed ‘Uraustronesisch’ *tipis ‘thin’ (dünnsein).

mattock:   pickaxe, mattock, hoe

Borrowing of Spanish pico ‘pickaxe’.

mattock:   hoe, mattock

Borrowing from Malay. Dempwolff (1938) posited Uraustronesisch *paŋku(rR) ‘hoe’.

meal, flour

Borrowing from Malay. Dempwolff (1938) reconstructed PAn *tepuŋ ‘flour, meal’.

measure

Borrowing from Malay.

measure:   dry measure for grain etc.

measurement:   unit of measurement

Also Balinese takeh ‘measure (large amount)’, takeh-an ‘a measure of volume’. Borrowing from Malay.

meat, flesh

meat and vegetable pastry

A Chinese loanword. Rubino (2000:340) give the Ilokano word as a borrowing of Hokkien (Minnan) lûn pià ‘spring cake’, and Mintz and Britannico (1985) give the Bikol word as a borrowing of Hokkien lun⁵ biã⁴ ‘moist pancake’.

medal:   badge, medal

The meaning of this form rules out any possibility of a reconstruction. Although it may reflect Spanish chapa ‘sheet of metal; thin board’, both the semantic divergence and its absence in Tagalog, Cebuano, or Ilokano, which were more heavily exposed to Spanish influence than either the Dumagat languages or Maranao, remains puzzling.

medicine:   gunpowder, medicine

This form appears to be native only in Malay, Sundanese, Balinese and probably Iban. Through borrowing from Malay it has been widely disseminated both in the meaning 'gunpowder' and in the meaning 'medicine'. It is best to regard it as a relatively late innovation in western Indonesia, and more importantly, as evidence that lexical borrowing from Malay affected languages extending from the northwestern Philippines> to the region of the SHWNG-OC language boundary in western New Guinea.

medicine chest

Borrowing from Spanish (Cebuano) and Portuguese (Javanese).

medium, average, intermediate

Dempwolff (1938) reconstructed *sedaŋ ‘middling amount’, leaving the last-syllable vowel of the Javanese form unexplained. Since the same problem is found with several other languages, it appears more economical to assume that Malay borrowed Javanese səḍəŋ, with subsequent spread of the loanword into other languages after the merger of last-syllable schwa and *a.

meet, run across, welcome

Based on just these two languages Dempwolff (1938) reconstructed Uraustronesisch *papag ‘to meet, run across’. However, Wilkinson gives papag as Malay variant, a form that could only be borrowed from Javanese, and there appears to be little basis for a reconstruction at even a very shallow time-depth.

meeting, assembly, gathering

Almost certainly a product of borrowing from Malay. Dempwolff (1938), who reconstructed *kampuŋ ‘meeting, assembly, gathering’, included Tongan kapu ‘to surround, etc.’, Futunan kāpu-i ‘encircle’, Samoan Ɂapu ‘a cup or dish made of a leaf’ in this comparison, but there seems to be little reason to treat the similarity of the Oceanic forms to those in western Indonesia as anything other than chance resemblances. For the unexpected Iban gloss cf. Blust (1980b).

melt or smelt (metals):   to melt or smelt (metals)

Also Malay ləbur ‘dissolution; liquefaction (especially of smelting)’. To these Dempwolff (1938) added Tagalog labol ‘iron’, a form that does not appear in modern dictionaries, and posited ‘Uraustronesisch’ *labur ‘to liquefy, melt’. Only the Ngaju Dayak, Nias and Sundanese forms appear likely to be related, and these are likely loans from Malay.

memorize

Borrowing from Malay, ultimately from Arabic.

merchandise for sale, to sell well

Borrowing of Malay laku ‘having value, selling well’. Arosi rao ‘to sell’ presumably is a chance resemblance.

mercury:   quicksilver, mercury

Borrowing of Spanish azogue ‘mercury, quicksilver’.

metal basin

Borrowing from Malay.

metal tang on knife or bolo

Probably an Ilokano loan in Itbayaten, and almost certainly borrowed in Ibatan.

Mexican turnip, Pachyrrhizus erosus

This native of Mexico, known in English as the ‘Mexican yam’, the ‘yam bean’, or the ‘Mexican turnip’, was introduced during the Spanish colonization of the Philippines, along with its name (jícama), ultimately from Nahuatl xīcamatl. Given the importance of the Manila Galleon trade, which connected Manila and Acapulco by annual voyages from 1572 to 1815, the introduction of this plant and its name almost certainly took place through Tagalog, with subsequent borrowing into other Philippine languages from the region of Manila Bay. It is noteworthy that it evidently was not introduced into Guam despite this island being a regular stopover in the Galleon trade. The borrowing of nouns in their plural form is common to many Spanish loanwords in both Philippine and Mexican Indian languages (Lopez 1965).

midwife

Borrowing, ultimately from Sanskrit.

milt, spleen

Apparently a Malay loanword.

mind:   thoughts, mind

A late innovation in western Indonesia, with borrowing from Malay into some Philippine languages. Aklanon aŋán-aŋán 'wait a little while, spend some time idling', and similar forms in some other Greater Central Philippines languages, appear to be distinct.

mind:   conscience, mind, insight

Borrowing, ultimately from Sanskrit. Iban budi, budiʔ shows secondary final glottal stop, and two polarized clusters of meaning, evidently connected with the existence of a former system of speech disguise based on antonymy (Blust 1981).

mirror

Borrowing from Malay, although a still to be identified Indic source is strongly suspected.

miscellaneous:   various, miscellaneous

Also Hanunóo sadisádi ‘miscellany; multifarious, various’. The history of this form is puzzling. Although it may have begun with the general meaning ‘various, miscellaneous’, in many languages it probably is a Tagalog loan that became widespread after the Spanish colonization and the introduction of a money economy. In any case, an assignment to Proto-Philippines would be incautious without further evidence of forms that are not likely to be borrowed.

mischief

Borrowing, ultimately from Sanskrit.

mistress:   lover, mistress

Probably a Tagalog loan, evidently connected with kabít ‘connected, attached, fastened, united’.

moist:   damp, moist

I cannot find Tagalog laŋás in any modern dictionary, and the rest of this comparison is best considered a loan distribution. Dempwolff (1938) reconstructed Uraustronesisch *leŋas ‘damp, moist’.

moist

Probably a Malay loan. I am unable to find Tagalog laŋás in sources available to me, and even if that were possible, the penultimate vowel correspondence is irregular, suggestive of borrowing or chance resemblance. On the basis of this comparison Dempwolff (1938) proposed ‘Uraustronesisch’ *leŋas ‘moist, damp’.

moist and slippery

Probably a Malay loan distribution. Based on this comparison Dempwolff (1938) posited Uraustronesisch *licak ‘wet and slippery’.

Monday

From Spanish Lunes ‘Monday’.

monetary support

Borrowing, ultimately from Sanskrit.

money

Almost certainly a borrowing of Southern Minangkabau wan, probably early in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). According to Robert Cheng (p.c.) some Minangkabau dialects, such as that of Swatow, permit only the velar nasal in final position. The final velar in uaŋ may thus have been present in the lending language. The pronunciation uaŋ is, of course, an accomodation to the predominant disyllabic canonical shape of most Austronesian languages, although a canonically atypical variant waŋ persists here and there. With the advent of Dutch colonial rule in Indonesia and English colonial rule in Malaysia the meaning of uaŋ, evidently began to shift from a specific unit of currency (which presumably was no longer used) to the more general sense which it has in most languages today.

money:   purse, money belt

Borrowing from Chinese.

money:   cut of gambling money

Borrowing from Hokkien tông ‘percentage cut of gambling taken from winners’.

monkey sp.

Borrowing. The route of transmission of this form remains unclear. There is every reason to believe that Bornean forms such as Kelabit bedhuk, Berawan (Long Terawan) becuʔ, Bintulu bəɗuk, Melanau (Mukah) beduk and Kayan beruk are native, and reflect a prototype of the shape *beduk. It is, moreover, likely that Malay originated from a population movement out of southwest Borneo beginning in the first or second century BC (Blust 1994). Early Malayic speakers in Borneo evidently borrowed this word from a language in which *-d- > r (as Kayan). The form is reflected with this irrgularity in Iban (a continuation of the Malayic population that remained in Borneo) in Malay, in Lampung of southern Sumatra, and in Balinese (which exhibits a second irregularity). The simplest hypothesis appears to be that speakers of Malay introduced a native Bornean monkey, and with it an irregularly altered form of its name, to Sumatra and perhaps some other parts of western Indonesia.

moody, having radical mood swings

moody, capricious behavior

Possibly a Tagalog loan in Kapampangan and Agutaynen, in which case this form may have been a Central Philippine innovation.

mop

From Spanish lampazo ‘mop’. Many thanks to Lyle Campbell for filling me in on details regarding the Spanish original.

morning, tomorrow

Borrowing from Javanese.

mortar, caulking

Also Balinese pijar ‘borax, solder’. Borrowing from Malay. Based on the comparison of Tagalog, Ngaju Dayak, Malay, Toba Batak and Javanese Dempwolff (1938) proposed Uraustronesisch *pizer ‘paste, solder’.

mosquito coil

mosquito net

Borrowing from Malay. Dempwolff (1938) reconstructed *kulambu ‘curtain’.

mother

Borrowing from Malay into at least Old Javanese and Modern Javanese, Balinese, and Sasak, The term *hibu probably originated in a language ancestral to Malay and a few of its closest relatives in western Indonesia.

motion:   seesaw motion

Borrowing from Javanese.

motorboat, launch

Borrowing of Spanish lancha ‘launch; rowing boat’.

mourn; dress in black mourning clothes

Borrowing of Spanish luto ‘to mourn’.

mouse, rat

Borrowing in Tiruray from a GCPh source.

mousedeer

Based on this comparison Dempwolff (1938) proposed *landuk ‘crafty, clever’, but the term seems to be inextricably connected with traditional tales of the cleverness of the mousedeer, which outwits its larger and stronger opponent and so earns the respect of the people. This is most likely a Malay loan distribution.

mouth

Borrowing from Malay, or possibly just a chance resemblance.

move:   budge, move slowly

Borrowing from Malay.

move rhythmically

The western Indonesian forms appear to be loanwords from Malay, and the resemblance of the Tagalog word to these is best attributed to chance. Dempwolff (1938) reconstructed ‘Uraustronesisch’ *tiŋkaq ‘move rhythmically’ (sich rhythmisch bewegen).

muddy

Borrowing from Malay.

mudfish

Borrowing from Tagalog

mushroom variety

Borrowing from Saaroa into Rukai. Li (1994:252) recognized Mantauran Ɂunipi as a loan from Saaroa, but until a cognate is found in at least one non-contiguous language I will assume the same for Budai unipi.

mussel sp.

Borrowing from Malay.

mustard

Borrowing of Spanish mostaza ‘mustard’.

mute

Borrowing from Malay.

muzzle for a dog

From Spanish bozal ‘muzzle’.

mythical creature that leads people astray

Borrowing from Tagalog.