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#24957 04/01/01 01:12 PM
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In reply to:

In Hindi, madhu is the word for wine


While in Indonesian madu means honey (the eatable kind rather than an endearment). Indonesian has taken quite a few words from Sanskrit.

Bingley



Bingley
#24958 04/01/01 02:39 PM
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Bingley

Am I right in presuming that the root language for Indonesian is a kind of proto-Chinese? No matter how much the vocabulary may have been influenced by the colonists from South India during the glory days of the Vijayanagara empire - [digression] which fact (Borobudur, Angkor Wat, and other South East Asian monuments, the storylines of the shadow-puppet plays etc) gives lie to the egregious "India-nationalist" email I have twice had to receive over the past few years that claims 'India' has never in its history invaded or colonised another country...[/digression]

cheer

the sunshine warrior


#24959 04/02/01 12:55 PM
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Indonesian is an Austronesian language. Austronesian languages are spoken from Madagascar in the West to Easter island in the East and from Taiwan in the North to New Zealand in the South (hi Max and Cap K), but not for the most part in Papua New Guinea and Australia. According to who you believe the Austronesian languages may have spread out from Taiwan (some of the native Taiwanese languages are members) or from the northern part of the Philippines. Either way Indonesian is not related to the Chinese languages any more than it's related to English.

Whether the Indian influences in Indonesia stemmed from some sort of political colonisation or from a combination of merchants indulging in a bit of cultural colonisation of the indigenous elite is again a matter of who you believe. There's not enough evidence to be sure either way.

Bingley


Bingley
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