Re: ts in Tagalog

From: Ben Zimmer (bgzimmer_at_midway.uchicago.edu)
Date: 10/12/04 

Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 02:42:02 -0400

Dalubwika wrote:
>
> Sean O'Leathlobhair wrote:
>
> >For example,
> >chili is sili rather than tsili as I would have expected. Does this
> >indicaate that sili was probably an earlier adoption than kotse?
>
> Quite possibly so.

Are you assuming that any Spanish loanwords with orthographic <ts> are
relatively late borrowings, simply because <ts> only started appearing
in late-19th century texts? I'd imagine that there was a period of
standardization when the <ts> spelling became applied uniformly to
preexisting loanwords (not just new ones). This might have also
resulted in spelling pronunciations where words that previously had /s/
were pronounced with /ts/.

In the case of <sili>, perhaps the standardization of <ts> (pronounced
as /ts/) for preexisting loanwords wasn't as successful in word-initial
or syllable-initial position, where /s/ would more likely be used. You
already mentioned <sitsaron> from <chicharrón> (though <tsitsaron> is
more common). On a Tagalog word-list I see some other examples:

sipol < chiflo 'whistling siren'
sisté < chiste 'joke'
sitsa < chicha 'fermented drink from corn'
sitsaro < chicharo 'pea'
sitsirika < chichirica 'pink periwinkle'
etc.

> And there is evidence of this in other words. For example,
> one can reasonably conclude that RILOS (reloj) and SABON (jabón) were adopted
> earlier and that HENERASYON (generación) was adopted later because of the fact
> that /s/ (indicating an archaic pronunciation in Spanish) is used instead of
> /h/.

Are you sure <sabon> wasn't borrowed from Portuguese <sabăo>, perhaps
via Malay <sabun>?

The reliable _European Loan-Words in Indonesian_ by C.D. Grijns et al.
says Malay <sabun> is of Portuguese origin, but I have other sources
that claim it's from Arabic <Sabu:n>. I think the Arabic word must
itself be a borrowing from Portuguese or another European language.
Etymological dictionaries say Sp. <jabón>, Pt. <sabăo>, Fr. <savon>,
and It. <sapone> all come from Late Latin <sapo>, in turn borrowed from
Germanic *saipon- (the etymon of English <soap>).