Paiwan Every Day 23: paisu

Let's talk about money today.

In the face of a devastating epidemic, some of us yet wonder if it is worthwhile to crash hard-won economies to less than 10% of the world's lives that will be snapped away from the earth by COVID-19. In short, can we save money by spending lives? What question is this?

Paiwan people have several words in stock for the abstract concept: money. Many (or maybe all) of them are borrowed because the concept is not an original Paiwan equation. Of course the society has its own valuables: clay pot, bead, bronze scythe, land, eagle feather, beautiful cloth, precious shells...et cetera. People used them to trade objects of equal value, but the practice is hardly the same as using money in the capitalistic sense.

1. paisu [loanword]- This is the most common word, and many think it comes from the Spanish piso or peso.  This is quite likely since in the 17th century the Spanish brought their silver and currency to the island, and Formosans, especially the mercantile Basay in the north, were very quick to pick it up. The word could very well have traveled to Paiwan in the south through an island-wide trade circuit. 
2. pakiyaw [loanword]- This is the word I heard and used often since childhood. It comes from the Taiwanese Hokkien dialect "puaʔ⊦-kiau`", which means gamble. This is also likely given the fact that my village sits next to a larger township of Taiwanese and Hakka settlers. Borrowing cannot be strange, even including the act of gambling. 
3. ginpian [loanword]- I don't hear this often, but the dictionary has it listed for the northern Paiwan variation. It also comes from a Taiwanese Hokkien dialect word, which means silver coin. 
4. valjitjuk - In the 1982 Raleigh Ferrell Paiwan Dictionary, the word refers to "any shiny metal object; lead (metal); bullet; money" (p. 333). Is it a loanword? One of my classmates found it similar to the Siraya word for money "vanitok" and wondered if it could have come from the trade between the Siraya and Paiwan in the past. The Siraya were the indigneous people living in where I am now,Tainan, and were the group the Dutch interacted most intensively from 1622 until 1661. Yet now the language and the people are considered no more. 

liaw a su paisu i ta gingku? 

In English: 

Do you have a lot of money in the bank? 

Glossary: 

1. liaw: a lot of
2. a: subject case marker 
3. su: your, 2nd person singular genitive (GEN)
4. i: in or at, locative (LOC)
5. ta: oblique case marker
6. gingku: bank, loanword from Japanese ぎんこう銀行. In Paiwan, there is no vowel like /o/ in IPA, therefore the Japanese こ (ko) becomes く (ku). 

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