Why do Polynesians say "wai' / "vai", Malays say "air" and some Filipinos say "tubig"?

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The words for "water" in many Austronesian languages usually come from either "daNum or "wahiR. These are reconstructed Proto-Austronesian words meaning "fresh water" or "stream / river". Howevers a few languages have other words for example "tubig" in some Philippine languages and "banyu" in Javanese and Balinese. Let's trace the origins of these fascinating words.
How do you say "water" in your language?
Map source:
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
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Images are all from unsplash.com/
Also, do check out my video from the Polyglot Gathering where I ask speakers of Malagasy, Malay, Bisaya and New Zealand Maori to guess the meanings of words in their respective languages.
• Echoes of Ancestral Vo...

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23 май 2022

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Комментарии : 1,2 тыс.

@alexis-tm9vd

In Tagalog, wahig means water coming from a fresh water stream. But this word is not known anymore, and i just found this word in my grandfather's century old dictionary. I guess this word is now replaced by bukal or batis.

@aarspar 2 года назад

Fun fact about Sundanese: while "cai" is the regular word for "water", the prefixed form "ci-" seems to preserve the original meaning of "stream, river". "Cikarang" like you mentioned literally means "river of rock/coral". Another example is "Citarum" which means "river of indigo plant".

@BatAskal 2 года назад

This is mind blowing! Goes to show how deep the connections Austronesians shared just by words. Now I understand where 'Danumsigwasan' comes from which is the Filipino scientific word for 'Hydraulics'. The 'Danum' part is water and 'sigwasan' is physics. So basically, it is the physics of water!

@rapemap 2 года назад

Old Javanese has "air", "er", "har", "her" for water. An example: the name of a javanese king Airlangga (ruled XI century AD), means literally "jumping (the) water" -> "he who crosses water".

@randriaH 2 года назад

In Malagasy, we also use "mino" which means "to drink"; and "ako" meaning "I"

@romeosantos9006

I noticed that "ig" in Tagalog has connotations of water - tubig (water), igib (to draw water), pasig (sandy riverbank or a river nearing the sea). It be related to wahig or vahig.

@mochardiansah7452 2 года назад

I have to admit, this channel is different. Others mainly go on general topics rather than focused on one like this one. It allows us to go deeper. One suggestion if I may, please add more visual illustration so we could have a better grasp and memorize the topic better. And one request if I may, please make a video about directions in Austronesian. Like, in Malay, why northeast is "Timur laut" (literally "East" "sea"), Northwest is "barat laut" (literally "West" "sea"), etc. I'm sure this phenomenon isn't unique to Malay

@mrnkstw275 Год назад

There are many words for water in javanese: banyu, toya, warih, her, we, ranu, tirta.

@tigorsilalahi6775 2 года назад

In Toba Batak the word 'I' is ahu (for written language), but we usually say 'au'. water is aek (other sub, Batak like Simalungun, they say 'bah' and for Pak-pak they say 'lau'. But the word of 'aek' is understable for kinds of Batak.

@adammorehouse7664 Год назад

In Māori there are no Ds, they are transliterated to Rs. So RANU makes complete sense. Thanks for the great video

@Dolfiey 12 часов назад

We say tubig to water because water is too big.

@ElNahum-vj3gb 21 час назад

Sikkanese: áü minu wair

@karimgamer7747 21 день назад

Bugis Tribe here in Sulawesi Indonesia

@Literallyandfiguratively 21 день назад

"anaw" in Ilonggo is overflow or flood or tsunami .

@Literallyandfiguratively 21 день назад

"Lawa" is tagalog for lake, "Laot" or "laut" in tagalog is open ocean or deep sea .

@FreshyNZ 28 дней назад

In Samoan, Lano is a lake. Asu is a Ladle. Vanu is valley.

@crystaluwu1012

Its like Austronesians have symantically shifted the word for water so much they even started using the other names for water bodies or water related stuff lols.

@crystaluwu1012

Banyu in filipino is the word for CR 😅