Thank you so much!! That means a lot to me! Yes Palauan is a language that hardly anyone in the language community talks about but is incredibly rich and interesting.
Wow! Our word for “eat” or “food” in Marshallese is almost identical: “mañe” (not sure I’m spelling it correctly), pronounced kind of like “mung-eh”, exactly how you were saying it in the video. We also have another word for eat: “kañ”, pronounced like “kung” with a soft k, almost g sound, and I see that it’s very similar to Proto-Austronesian word for eat/food. My mind is blown🤯 Thanks for the vid!
@@seid3366 the amazing consequence of being located in that "sweet spot" of isolation between Micronesia, the Philippines, and Indonesia - no wonder it and CHamoru have very unclear relationships with the rest of MP
Researching for a future Palauan video, the transitive verb forms are a pain. Root: ka(l), to imperfective: menga /mə'ŋa/ Present + 3sg object = kolii Present + 3pl non-human object = kma Past + 3sg object = killii Past + 3pl non-human object = kila Ak kolii a ngikel "I eat it the fish Ak kmang a ngikel "I eat (them + connecter) the fish" Ak kilii a ngikel "I ate it the fish" Ak kila a ngikel "I ate (them) the fish"
Yes true, I think Palauan almost rivals Na-Dene languages in the amount of coalescence and merging of morphemes. A learner has to memorise about a dozen forms per verb because the merger of root and affixes is now so opaque.
Interesting. In Cebuano I know 6 words for different kinds of eating: kaon = eat (general or common term) kilaw = eat raw or unprepared food tilok = eat without leftovers lamon = gobble or eat hastily without proper chewing habhab = eat a lot and without restraint tilaw = to taste, but can also mean "eat a little" usually because of curiosity
these merging of suffixes to the root words are a bit similar to javanese. although palauan is clearly a lot more harrdcore wedhi = to be afraid me-wedhi-ani = medeni = to be scary laku = to do ke-laku-an = klakon = deed / done santri = islamic scholar pe-santri-an = pesantren = islamic boarding school bupati = regent ka-bupati-an = kabupaten = regency pati = death me-pati-ani = mateni = to kill
Any other example of this in other (Austronesian) languages? I've heard that Indonesian perempuan is from per+empu+an, but the merger is milder compared to what you show.
Yes "perempuan" does come from "empu" with "per - an". Malay / Indonesian has a few but nothing like Palauan. I think, Palauan is the most extreme example of phonological change in the whole Austronesian family :)
without ng-, ikel to ikan is clear (the l -> n shift, along with an a -> e shift too), which is seen again in malk to manuk (l -> n, and u gets compressed and disappears)
To add to Seid's analysis, "Ng" seems to be intrusive in Palauan and is interjected with a frequency similar to Philippine type languages. So Ng as an initial, medial or terminal phoneme is very common in Palauan.
So the proto-Austronesian "n" becomes "l". Waray 🇵🇭 • Past perfective Kumaon hiya. Kinmaon hiya. (He/She ate.) Waray's "-inm-" is from the proto form "-umin-" -> "-inum-". If we connect it to Palauan: • kumaon hiya -> kumaol iya -> kmal iya -> kmalia -> kmalii • kuminaon hiya -> kumilaol iya -> kmilal iya -> kmallia -> kmillii Just my hypothesis
@@seid3366 Afaik for the "standard" dialect (Tacloban maybe), yes it has the shift. But I am aware of few dialects of Waray that did not undergo the shift.
It's quite different but also reminds me of Bagobo-Klata, a language spoken around Davao, Philippines, that has some very interesting morphological changes For example: tɔ.ˈʔi (to accompany) becomes 'ti.na in the irrealis benefactive voice (not sure how often that's used lol) Basically: tɔ.ˈʔi + a (IRR.BV) → tɔ.ˈʔi.na (n=epenthesis from earlier form of the language) tɔ.ˈʔi.na → tɔ.ˈti.na (assimilation) tɔ.ˈti.na → 'ti.na (deletion) also ˈtaː.waŋ (help) + -a → ˈtaː.wa.ŋa taː.wa.ŋa → waː.ŋa waː.ŋa → ˈkwaː.ŋa (with epenthesis) You can look up Estrera's paper from SEALS 2021
