Saturday, August 28, 2021

Paiwan Every Day 539: amirika / aumeng / baljaka

Ferrell has at least three words in his dictionary as to how Paiwan refer to foreigners or white people. They are all loanwords:
  • amirika: Occidental (Eng.) (Ferrell, p. 57)
  • aumeng: Occidental (Min. "red-harid barbarian") (Ferrell, p. 60)
  • baljaka: Europeans, Americans (? from Malacca, najor Dutch trading center enroute Formosa in 17th century?) (Ferrell, p. 62).
I hear amirika or amilika the most, never aumeng, and only once when I was doing field work on loanwords and conversing with Puyuma elders, I heard the use of baljaka

maljian a quljaw na kakakaka na amilika. 

Free translation
The color of the pupils of Americans is different. 

Word gloss
  1. malji-an: different, not the same. The root is malji 'different, amazing, angry'  (loanword from Japanese?); -an 'NMZ'. 
  2. a: subject case marker
  3. quljaw: color
  4. na: of, GEN
  5. kakakaka: pupils
  6. amilika: Americans, foreigners
Voice file

From Raleigh Ferrell's Paiwan Dictionary (1982) and ILRDF Online Paiwan Dictionary kakakaka

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