Re: Archaeology unearths gout in early Pacific people

I correspond with a Taiwanese linguist, who tells me I should refer to
the aboriginals as Formosans, and the majority Chinese
as Taiwanese. (As Formosa was named by the Portuguese, I find this a
little weird).

regards

Richard

But "Taiwan" is a Chinese name, so "Taiwanese" for the Aboriginals
would be just as weird.
And "Taiwanese" has become established as a name for the common
variety of Chinese spoken there. So linguists (at least) stick with
"Formosan" for the AN languages.

Ross Clark


The word for 'person, human' in certain Formosan languages is:

Favorlang/Babuza - babosa
Ci'uli Atayal - ci'uli?
Squliq Atayal - squliq
Sediq Taroko - sediq
Siraya - sidaia
Bunun - bunun

Which is a very obvious answer to 'What do you call yourselves?'

But not as good as the Australian native who was asked what a certain
animal was, and answered: 'How the f**k should I know?' which is why
we now call it a kangaroo.

The indri (lemur)'s name means nothing special; it's just 'Here it
is!' in Malagache, the local Austronesian language of Madagascar. In
Filipino Bisayan, also an Austronesian language, more closely related
to Malagache (6000 miles away) than French (22 miles away) is to
English, the same expression is "Diri na!"

If I could read Chinese (台灣;) I might tell you what T'ai-wan means.
Wikipedia says "Both Tayoan and the island name Taiwan derive from a
word in Sirayan, one of the Formosan languages"

The only word I can find in Siraya that remotely resembles that is
'mat-tauwa' meaning 'laugh'. Perhaps the colonising Dutch really were
laughable, before they started in on the usual native massacres.

Formosa just means 'beautiful', so, if I was one of the very few
Formosans left, I would be happy that everyone else, including even
linguists ;-) called me that.

regards


Richard
.