anema su kudakudain?
kitulu aken tua pinaiwanan.
In English:
What are you doing?
I am studying the Paiwan language.
Glossary:
- anema: what
- su: your
- kudakudain: the root is kuda 'rule, regulation, work, result'. [kuda-kuda-in] means business, the thing that's being done.
- kitulu: the root is tulu 'to teach, the place for study'. [ki-tulu] means to learn, actor voice/focus. A similar word is kicaquan.
- aken: I
- tua (ta): oblique phrase marker for the specific common noun
- pinaiwanan: the root is paiwan (Paiwan). [p-in-aiwan-an] means the Paiwan thing that is being <in> said or done; the conjugation usually means the Paiwan language.
Reading:
On Day 76, I talked about king 'gold' (loanword) using Professor Robert Blust's article "The Prehistory of the Austronesian-speaking Peoples" (1995) as a basis. The gist of that post was to show Austronesian-speaking Formosans might be more metallurgy-literate than recognized.
Today I read another short article by Professor Blust "Formosan Evidence For Early Austronesian Knowledge of Iron" (perhaps 2013). Again, quoting from his impressive collection of Austronesian Comparative Dictionary, Professor Blust reiterates with examples from Taokas (now extinct), Kavalan (still spoken by very few descendants now), Saisiyat, Isbukun Bunun, and Paiwan that
"Foromsan aborigines had a knowledge of iron from the earliest Neolithic settlement of the island over 5,000 years ago" (p. 14).
For Tom, a linguist friend who once asked me in Leiden Netherlands if Formosans knew iron. Tom, Blust said yes because words like iron (vatjuljayan in Paiwan, namat and/or balis in Kavalan), rust or rusty (djiljang in Paiwan) exist in their vocabulary.
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