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Mountain Names of Bangladesh

Created [22/12/2024]

Saka Haphong, Zow Tlang/ Reang Haphong, Aiyang Tlang, Dumlong/ Msha Panji Haphong, Keokradong, Maithaijama Haphong, Thingdawlte Tlang, Mukhra Thuthai Haphong, Kapital Haphong, Kreikung Taung, Sippi Ar-suang, Taung Prai, Tazing Dong

The purpose of this article is solely for the purpose of etymology, not geography so descriptions about the mountains themselves will not be given. The list of names of mountains was obtained from this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mountains_of_Bangladesh

Immediately when looking at these names, we can notice certain words repeating often, such as: Haphong, Dong, Tlang

Repeating Titles

Haphong

Saka Haphong is spelt in Burmese in the Wikipedia page as ဆကးအဖောင်. The Burmese Wikipedia names it as ဆက်ခဟဖွန့် (transliteration: hcakkhahaphwan).

Hapong/ Haping means “mountain/ hill” in Kokborok. If we look at https://stedt.berkeley.edu/~stedt-cgi/rootcanal.pl/gnis?lexicon.lgiď1122 then we find ha-poŋ listed under Kokborok, with the citation:

Tripuri, Prashanta and Jurafsky, Dan. 1988. Kokborok dictionary. (unpublished ms. contributed to STEDT). Accessed via STEDT database <http://stedt.berkeley.edu/search/> on 2025-03-10.

Tlang

According to the Bawm dictionary app, tlang means “lump”. Kennet VanBik's book about Proto-Kuki-Chin directly gives us the term for mountain in the ancestor of Bawm with cognates in other Kuki-Chin languages: "[1263] HILL2 / MOUNTAIN PKC *klaaŋ; Mara tlà ‘a mountain, a hill’; H. Lai tlâaŋ ‘hill, mountain’; F. Lai tlǎaŋ ‘hill, mountain’; Mizo tláang ‘a mountain, a hill’; Thado Kuki hláaŋ ‘mountain, mountain range’; Paite taang ‘hill’; Asho kyan ‘a mountain, hill’. (2009, p.294)"

Dong/Taung

Mountain in Rakhine. In Burmese script it is တောင်.

After this, we will look at:

Individual Mountain Names

Zow Tlang

We can find the meaning of this term from the Wikipedia page about Zow Tlang

" In the Bawm language, "Zow" means Mizo, a term derived from Mizoram, India. This is probably due to the fact that Bangladesh was a part of greater India before 1947. "Tlang" means mountain." The reference given states the same thing:

"More about Zow Tlang". Retrieved 2024-12-22. httpsː//bd.top10place.com/zow-tlang-1824170910.html

If we go to the Burmese Wikipedia:

ဇိုးလန့်တောင်

ဝေါဟာရသမိုင်း

Bawn ဘာသာစကားတွင် ဇိုး (Zow) သည် မိဇို(Mizo) ဟု အဓိပ္ပာယ်ရသည်။ မိဇိုသည် အိန္ဒိယစကား မိဇိုရမ် (Mizoram) မှ ဆင်းသက်လာသည့် ဝေါဟာရတစ်ခု ဖြစ်သည်။

Reang Haphong

"The two other major dialects are Riang (or Reang) and Noatia. Smaller dialects are Jamatia, Koloi and Rupini." (dialects, Wikipedia, Kokborok, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokborok, resource: Bradley, David (2002). "The subgrouping of Tibeto-Burman". In Beckwith, Christopher I. (ed.). Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages. Brill. p. 83

So Reang Haphong is Reang (ethnic group) + mountain

Keokradong

In Bangla script: কেওক্রাডং keokraɖɔŋ, কেওকাড়াডং keokaɽaɖɔŋ

"কেওক্রাডং শব্দটি মারমা ভাষা থেকে এসেছে। মারমা ভাষায় কেও মানে ˈপাথরˈ, কাড়া মানে ˈপাহাড়ˈ আর এবং ডং মানে ˈসবচেয়ে উঁচুˈ। অর্থাৎ কেওক্রাডং মানে সবচেয়ে উঁচু পাথরের পাহাড়।"

From Bangla Wikipedia, the etymology is stated as from Marma (Rakhine), where keo = stone, k(a)ra = mountain, and dong = summit.

Stone is "ကျောက်" in Burmese, which is kyauk in transliteration and /ʧaʊʔ/ in pronunciation. If Marma does not palatalise ky- to /tɕ/, then the first component matches. And according to the STEDT database, searching "stone" yields /kyɔʔ/ for Marma. Second syllable? Unsure. kraʔ means "fowl/ chicken" in Marma, though does this name really mean "stone chicken summit"?

Tazing Dong

[6/05/2026]

If we go to the Bangla Wikipedia page, it gives us this information:

"স্থানীয় অধিবাসীদের ভাষায় "তাজিং" শব্দের অর্থ বড় বা সর্বোচ্চ[২৮] আর "ডং" শব্দের অর্থ পাহাড়"; "স্থানীয় অধিবাসী" means local people, but it never specifies a language. It states that it means "highest peak".

"স্থানীয় মারমাদের ভাষায় "তাজিং" শব্দের অর্থ হলো গাঢ় সবুজ এবং "ডং" শব্দের অর্থ হলো পাহাড়চূড়া বা পর্বতশৃঙ্গ।" Here it states Marma language and claims that Tazing means "deep green".

Green in Marma is အစီမ်းရောင် asī́mraung/aséimraung and that info was obtained from this video:

Though this does not account for the ta- in the first syllable.

Maithaijama Haphong

The Wikipedia page claims "The name "Maithai Jama Haphong" came from the Tripura language. which means, "Bad hilly place for vegetation."" But this is very weird. We know Haphong is from Kokborok/ Tripuri language but the first two words are simply Bangla for "clothes on the head".

Thingdawlte Tlang

The nearest settlement is Thingdawlte (Bawm) village, for which the peak is named. The name looks like Bawm. It’s very hard to find any information on name etymologies in Bawm, unfortunately.

Taung Prai

Wikipedia page claims "Taung prai is a Marma word which means "Ulta pahar"(উল্টা পাহাড়)"; in Bangla উল্টা generally means upside-down. In Burmese, according to the STEDT database, prai means effaced, wasted.

Kreikung Taung

From the Wikipedia page we get this information:

"Alternative name: Ngaramh Tlang (ন্যারা্ম্ ত্ল্যাং,বম); Kreikung Taung name originated from local Marma language.

Bengali meaning: মাছ পাহাড়"

The Bawm alternative name is a bit easier to research.

Proto-Kuki-Chin *ŋaa means fish, and can be traced back to Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-ŋja fish

Where we can find Burmese ငါး nga: fish

ramh? is probably from the word for forest/ land/ country: "[953] PKC *ram Mara rà ‘land, country, kingdom’; H. Lai râm ‘land, country, forest’; F. Lai rǎm ‘land, country’; Mizo rám ‘country, forest, jungle, kingdom, domain, territory’" (VanBik, 2009, p.238). There is another entry in Proto-Kuki-Chin which is *ram but the meaning does not seem to match; "[930] PKC *ram DESTROY / ANNIHILATE / WASTE Mizo râm ‘to destroy, to damage, to lay waste to, ravage (as pigs, children, etc. can do to a garden)’" (VanBik, 2009, p.234). Therefore Ngaramh Tlang means "fish land mountain"

As for the Marma name, according to STEDT online database, krei is "star" in Arakanese, cf. Burmese ကြယ် kray. But the second syllable is harder. In the STEDT database, kuŋ in the Burmish branch gives an entry for Proto-Lolo-Burmese, but not Burmese itself. The Burmese term in the STEDT database starts with kh- so the consonants don't match.

Mukhra Thuthai haphong

The Bangla name is মুখরা থুতাই হাফং which is read mukhra thutai kaphong, so the issue is with the second word in English both t's are aspirated, but in Bangla only one is. Considering the name is from Tripuri/ Kokborok language, I am not sure what to trust. Regarding etymology, it's all guesswork.

I am using this as a source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381278072 A Grammar of Tripura

The word for place in Tripuri is tʰai, but again this is an aspirated t which does match with the English name but not with the Bangla transliteration. Apparently there are words with the form thu: "tʰù sleep", tʰu wear/slim", but I do not think they are related to the name of the mountain. The word for water is tui/ twi (Rashel, 2024, p.1). In this case the aspiration does not match, for some reason I still thought I should mention it. As for mukhra, this is the only phonological comparison I could find: [muˑk.hro] /mùkhrò/ ‘head’, [muˑk.hra] /mukhra/ ‘monkey’ (Rashel, 2024, p.57, p.247).

Conclusion

At the end of the day, the names of Aiyang Tlang, Dumlong/ Msha Panji Haphong and Sippi Ar-suang are unknown to me as I cannot find etymological information about them.

Reference List

Button, C. (2009). A reconstruction of Proto Northern Chin in Old Burmese and Old Chinese perspective.

Rashel, Md. M. (2024). A Grammar of Tripura. 18608946 Bytes. https://doi.org/10.26181/22433158.V1

VanBik, K. (2009). Proto-Kuki-Chin: A reconstructed ancestor of the Kuki-Chin languages. Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus Project, Dept. of Linguistics research unit in Univ. of California, Berkeley.

#bangla #vocabulary #etymology #translation #rakhine #marma #kokborok #tripuri #sino-tibetan #bawm #mountains #mountain #summit #Youtube

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In English the words for animals are native English while when they are cooked, they take on French names, for eg. sheep vs mutton, cow vs beef, chicken vs poultry, and I realised that this phenomenon occurs in one instance in Bangla. Bangla মগজ môgôj from Farsi مغز maɣz, brain. I have only ever used it in the sense of food, not as the regular word for brain. The regular word is a Sanskrit borrowing, মস্তিষ্ক môstiškô.

#etymology #vocabulary #bangla #bengali #food #cow #beef #animals #offal

A genuinely good way to quickly learn animal names in many languages

It's hard to find content in Czech so I am so happy there is an option here

Become an evolutionary detective to find the Mystery Animal!

#metazooa #czech #cestina #cesky #animal #vocabulary

Numbers in Mru, another Sino-Tibetan language

Mru is part of a branch of ST consisting of only two languages: Mru and Anu-Khongso. This post will focus very heavily on only numbers in Mru, even its sister language, Anu-Khongso might not be described much in favour of extra-Mruic cognate within ST, aka trying to find cognates in other branches of ST. The first text I used was from Md Mostafa Rashel once again, who also wrote about Marma which I have made a few posts on, the text is: Morphosyntactic Analysis of Mro Language, https://doi.org/10.3329/dujl.v2i3.4149

However I have also found this: https://sites.google.com/site/sinotibetanbranches/central-sino-tibetan/mru-khongso, so I will be evaluating all the data from that website. That page also contains an excel file with lots of data from Mru-Hkongso. Today I will only be looking at the numerals.

Table 1: list of Mro numerals taken from (Rashel, 2010, p.159)

Table 2: numbers in Mro taken from Rashel (2010, p.159) & the table downloaded from the blog by Hsiu (2018)

One of the dictionaries for Sino-Tibetan languages is Matisoff’s STEDT (2015) which is available as PDF form as the website seems to be down but what I found very confusing is that Mru entries were not present at all in the numeral section? Even though they were present in other parts of the dictionary? Regardless, I still listed the entries which could be PST origins of the Mru words, the PST words are from: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Sino-Tibetan_numerals, which come from Matisoff’s STEDT (2015).

3. ʃum, ts‘om2 < PMr. *sum < *kV-sum

4. taːli, tă4li1 < PMr. *li < *pV-lij

5. taŋa, tă4ŋɑ1 < PMr. *ŋa < *l-ŋaʔ

6. tro, tăro1 < PMr. *ruk < *k-ruk; if it is possible for final -k to be lost

7. rinit, răniᶦt3 < PMr. *rnit < *s-ni-s

8. rijat, rĭyɑːt3 < PMr. *r.jat < *pV-rjat

9. tako, tăku1 < PMr. *ku < *tə-ŋguʔ; some descendants show a voiceless root instead of voiced, like PKC *kua (VanBik, 2009, [302])

For Mru 11, lailɔk, Kuki-Chin also uses the form lei to count teens, compare Bawm lai-khat 11 (khat = 1), (omniglot). Furthermore, note the Mru word for 21, pirmilailɔk (20 + lai + 1), this form is also used in Bawm, where 21 is kul lei-khat, again the same format: (kul = 20, khat = 1). But even through searching and searching, I was not able to find any other ST languages which use a form beginning with l- for the teens, nor was I able to find any etymological information for either Mru or Kuki-Chin.

The suffix -kɔm is used to count 30, 40, 50 etc. basically for decades after 20, but it seems to also be a part of the word for 100 too. This term is not used in Kuki-Chin.

"There are a few doubtful Austroasiatic parallels (cf. Mru lök : Palaung leh, one), but their number does not surpass that of similar parallels between Kukish and Austroasiatic." (Löffler, 1996, p.157)

In the end, the origins of the numbers: 1, 2, 10, 11, decades after 20, 100, are a mystery.

Abbreviations

PKC = Proto-Kuki-Chin

PMr. = Proto-Mru

ST = Sino-Tibetan

Sources

Hsiu, A. (2018). Mru-Khongso. https://sites.google.com/site/sinotibetanbranches/central-sino-tibetan/mru-khongso

Löffler, L. G. (1996). The contribution of Mru to Sino-Tibetan linguistics. Zeitschrift Der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 1(116), 118–159.

Matisoff, James A. 2015. The Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus. Berkeley: University of California. http://stedt.berkeley.edu/dissemination/STEDT.pdf (Accessed 15/03/2026)

Rashel, M. M. (2010). Morphosyntactic Analysis of Mro Language. Dhaka University Journal of Linguistics, 2(3), 141–160. https://doi.org/10.3329/dujl.v2i3.4149

VanBik. (2009). Proto-Kuki-Chin: A Reconstructed Ancestor of the Kuki-Chin Languages.

https://www.omniglot.com/language/numbers/bawm.htm

Also take a look at this, as I made a post about Kuki-Chin last year: https://www.tumblr.com/linguisticsizfun/780325906103320576/numbers-in-bawm?source=share

#etymology #mru #mro #sino tibetan #vocabulary #numbers #number #numerals

Japanese words which are cognate with Bangla

The advent of Buddhism brought many loanwords from Sanskrit and surrounding languages into Chinese and Korean which then spread into Sino-Xenic (Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese). Not all the words are direct borrowings from Chinese; Buddhism had already spread to Korea before the formal introduction of Chinese vocabulary in Japan, therefore some loanwords are through the mediation of Old Korean, Korean languages pre 1st millennium AD, and Proto-Korean.

Here are a few Japanese words of Sanskrit origin with their Bangla counterparts:

ক্ষণ khôɲ moment - 刹那 setsuna moment < MC tsrhaet na; The Chinese character 剎 is used to transcribe Sanskrit words beginning with the syllable kṣa-/ kṣe-, even though the Chinese character ends in coda -t. The coda -t becomes -tsu in Modern Japanese as Japanese syllables cannot end in consonants (except -n).

খেত khet field, Sanskritised Bangla ক্ষেত্র khetrô - 寺 tera temple, Buddhist monastery, the term comes not directly from Chinese but through the mediation of Korean, and appears first in Japanese texts of the 700s. It may come from the ancestor of Middle Korean 뎔〮 tyél, Modern Korean 절 jeol, both terms also meaning a Buddhist temple or monastery. The Korean term comes from MC 剎. Sanskrit kṣetra was borrowed into MC as 剎多羅 tsrhaet ta la but commonly abbreviated to just the first Chinese character, which gave a few Korean pronunciations: 뎔〮 tyél and 찰 chal. The fact that the Japanese terms are recorded first in the 700s is important, because that's older than when Old Korean is dated and Old Koread had syllables ending in vowels, before massive vowel loss and contraction in Middle Korean. A quote directly from Wiktionary: "The vowel ㅕ (Yale: ye) in Koreanic languages had been constantly transcribed as in Japanese, until its pronunciation changed to [jʌ̹] in standard Korean (cf. 寺てら (tera, “temple”, (very likely) borrowed from a Koreanic language (likely Baekje), related to Middle Korean 뎔〮 (Yale: tyél; modern Korean 절 (jeol)))"

মরা môra to die, মারা mara to kill - 魔法 mahō magic, this term is used to mean magical powers/ sorcery/ wizardry in terms of fantasy literature. The second character is native Chinese so unimportant to this analysis. The term literally means "devil's law", and the first character is a contraction of the term 魔羅 MC mala "devil" from Sanskrit māra which means "killer".

করা kôra to do - 羯磨 katsuma karma, from MC kjot ma, again the Chinese coda -t, must become Japanese -tsu. Sanskrit karma is a noun from the verb root kr- to do.

বোঝা bojha to understand - of course we should just quickly list the Japanese terms for Buddha. The word Buddha is just a past participle of the Sanskrit verb root bodh- to understand, and since Buddha is generally translated as "enlightened", the meaning "understood" = "enlightened" in the sense of someone who understood the path of freedom from suffering. Japense term: 仏 hotoke or butsu. First term hotoke: comes from Korean and first recorded in 720AD the Nihon Shoki. Again, as this term was recorded before Old Korean was ever written, this is why it has no syllables ending in consonants. The Proto-Korean form is *Pwutukye, Middle Korean 부텨 pwùthyè, modern 부처 bucheo. The Old Japanese pronunciation is poto2ke2 /pətəkəɨ/. Secodnly the term butsu is easy to guess- direct borrowing of Middle Chinese, MC bjut.

নিবানো nibano to extinguish - 涅槃 nehan from MC net ban, though I am not sure why Chinese coda -t did not get recorded in Japanese, because the coda gets incorporated in Korean and Vietnamese: 열반 yeolban, niết bàn. Nirvana in Buddhism is achieved though extinguishing one's desires, which is how the meaning of the Bangla word is related. There is also a word for Nirvana in Old Bangla: নিবাণ nibaɳ(å)

Sources: Bangla words are from my own knowledge. Japanese words and etymologies are from Wiktionary. To check the sources for yourselves, you can search the Japanese terms on the English Wiktionary.

Abbreviations

MC – Middle Chinese

#etymology #bangla #translation #vocabulary #bengali #japanese #buddhism #korean #chinese

Random Bangla Etymologies 2

পোড়া poɽa to burn

I made a post on reddit about this recently about whether it has Dravidian origin. Link to the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dravidiology/comments/1qr4us3/could_this_ia_root_have_a_dravidian_etymology/

I will repost what I stated:

From Turner etymological dictionary: 8397 *pōḍ 'burn'. This term for burn is only limited to East Indo-Aryan (Bangla Oriya Assamese), Khowar and Marathi https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/soas_query.py?qs=p%C5%8D%E1%B8%8D&searchhws=yes&matchtype=exact&fbclid=IwY2xjawPpg8VleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFBdHZsWk5TMEs4b3VtV0Flc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHgK-eJQKMn_ptqJ-QFad7Ef4lccr7V47jxnSStbj8qX9bn5pX08MhkRcYje-_aem_S3CojbJOYgrqHvhQQkeutA Could this term have a Dravidian etymology? For example, DEDR 4517 there are terms with the form pot- relating to burning or starting a fire. Not retroflex t but still.

See DEDR4517 on this page: https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/burrow_query.py?page=399

I will repost some comments too:

"Regarding the specific root, DEDR 4517 (pottu) remains the strongest candidate because it consistently covers the meanings of kindling, lighting, and burning across almost all Dravidian branches. In historical linguistics, a change from the dental t or tt in Dravidian to a retroflex ḍ in Indo-Aryan is often influenced by phonetic context. In many Middle Indo-Aryan dialects, dental consonants between vowels commonly weakened or “flapped” into retroflex sounds. The root pōḍ likely comes from a Proto-Dravidian form such as put- or pot-, where the Indo-Aryan borrowing process turned the dental stop into a retroflex sound to distinguish it from existing Indo-Aryan roots."

My reply: "I agree and the last thing I'm curious about is if any other processes of spontaneous retroflexation exist within IA"

The next reply is quite large, it is recommended to read up in the original post and search the sources. Here is the full reply:

"Spontaneous retroflexion in Indo-Aryan is a well-documented phenomenon where dental consonants shift to retroflexes without the influence of a neighboring retroflex or an 'r' sound. Scholars like Deshpande and Masica have analyzed this extensively as it is a hallmark of the South Asian linguistic area.

The Indo-Aryan Languages by Colin P. Masica (Page 158 specifically discusses spontaneous retroflexion and the "flapping" of intervocalic stops in the Outer Circle languages.) https://archive.org/details/indoaryanlanguag0000masi

Substrate Influence - This is the primary theory for words like pōḍ. When Indo-Aryan speakers moved into areas with a strong Dravidian or Munda substrate, they often "over-corrected" or adapted dental sounds into the retroflex series that was already dominant in the local tongues.

Aryan and Non-Aryan in India by Madhav Deshpande & Peter Hook (editors). (Refer to paper/essay "Genesis of Rgvedic Retroflexion: A Historical and Sociolinguistic Investigation by Madhav M. Deshpande") https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Madhav-Deshpande/publication/270155926_Aryan_and_Non-Aryan_in_India/links/60fdf5f00c2bfa282aff22a0/Aryan-and-Non-Aryan-in-India.pdf

Fortunatov’s Law - This is a specific historical rule where the cluster of l + dental in Proto-Indo-Aryan often resulted in a retroflex in Sanskrit and subsequent Prakrits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortunatov%27s_law

Acoustic Mimicry - In many Middle Indo-Aryan dialects, specifically in the Outer Circle (Marathi, Odia, Bengali), there was a natural tendency for intervocalic stops to weaken and "flap." A single dental -t- or -d- frequently flapped into a -ḍ-, which is acoustically more distinct in a fast-speaking environment.

Onomatopoeia - Words describing harsh actions, noises, or physical sensations (like crackling, snapping, or burning) often spontaneously retroflex to sound "harder" or more descriptive.

If the word pōḍ was borrowed from a Dravidian dental root like pott-, the "spontaneous" retroflexion in Indo-Aryan (pōḍ) proves it was integrated so deeply that it followed the internal phonetic evolution of the Prakrits rather than remaining a clear "foreign" loanword."

The paper/essay "Genesis of Rgvedic Retroflexion: A Historical and Sociolinguistic Investigation by Madhav M. Deshpande" is a good reference."

#random bangla etymologies #etymology #bangla #language #vocabulary #bengali #burn #dravidian

Personal Pronouns in Marma

The table of pronouns is based on two texts:

Houghton, B. (1897). Art. XVI.—The Arakanese Dialect of the Burman Language. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 29(3), 453–461. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00024679

Morphosyntactic Analysis of Marma Language, authored by Mohammad Ashaduzzaman, Md. Mostafa Rashel (2008)

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329071156_Morphosyntactic_Analysis_of_Marma_Language, https://www.academia.edu/416820/Morphosyntactic_Analysis_of_Marma_Language

Table 1: Marma pronouns based on (Houghton, 1897, p.458; Rashel, 2008, p.148) while the Burmese is taken from Wiktionary

ငါတို့ ŋàto̰, which contains a plural marker. The wiktionary page even directly mentions "Cognate with Rakhine -ရို့." meaning ŋoro is we and direct cognate to the Burmese term.

ကျွန် slave < *kron > OC 倌 *kʷˤra[n]-s servant, groom, 宦 *m-kʷˤ<r>a[n]-s eunuch, to hold public office

Direct sources from the articles:

(Houghton, 1897, p.458)

(Rashel, 2008, p.148), to note, the first person plural here ends in the direct object suffix -go, instead of presenting the subject form.

#marma #arakanese #burmese #etymology #pronouns #grammar #sino tibetan

Never in my life have I heard someone refer to speakers of a language as souls

#mru #mro #sino-tibetan #linguistics #article

Verbal Particles in Marma

List taken from the source: Rashel, Md. M. (2008). Morphosyntactic Analysis of Marma Language. 3 & 4, 143-156. URL: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329071156_Morphosyntactic_Analysis_of_Marma_Language, https://www.academia.edu/416820/Morphosyntactic_Analysis_of_Marma_Language

Particles compared with Burmese. Is my analysis correct? Not sure, it’s hard to get data in Marma in the first place, and be sure if the transcriptions are good enough. Therefore the main objective of posts like these is to analyse whatever is mentioned directly in my sources. The Burmese texts are taken from Wiktionary, etymology given when possible.

m- negative = မ ma pre verbal negator < *ma with cognates in Chinese too

-li/lire past

-hoʔ/phoʔ future = unsure, ဖို့ means "in order to" in Burmese

-ro progressive = ရ ja particle exists in Burmese, not sure of its function

-tuŋb progressive = တောင် tauŋ maybe, in Burmese this means "yet, already"

-bja state, a past tense/ complated action marker

-khe simple past = ခဲ့ kʰɛ̰ Burmese past tense

-n̥ɔjŋ potential = Burmese နိုင် nàɪɴ < *m-nyaŋ > OC 能 /*nˤə/, /*nˤə(ŋ)/, /*nˤə(ʔ)/ "can" even in Modern Chinese

#marma #burmese #grammar #verb #verbs #verbal #chinese #etymology

Numeral Classifiers in Marma

There is a text called Morphosyntactic Analysis of Marma Language, authored by Mohammad Ashaduzzaman, Md. Mostafa Rashel (2008) and I sought to get info about the Marma language from this text and compare it to standard Burmese. I will go section by section, you are however free to read the full paper from these sources:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329071156_Morphosyntactic_Analysis_of_Marma_Language, https://www.academia.edu/416820/Morphosyntactic_Analysis_of_Marma_Language

Marma data taken from (Rashel, 2008, p.154), Burmese data taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_numerical_classifiers, with all the etymological information from Wiktionary

Below is the list of all the numeral classifiers with etymology given for the Burmese terms.

jaʔ People ယောက် yok [jauʔ] < etymology not given

luŋ Round things လုံး luṃḥ [lóuɰ̃] < PST *m-lu(ŋ/m), Chinese not given, Tib. ཟླུམ round. The Burmese term is also "round" as an adjective

khjɔŋ Long thin things ချောင်း khyoŋḥ [tɕʰáuɰ̃], term means same as creek, rivulet, so the classifier is a grammaticalisation of a common noun

khja Hours နာရီ /nàjì/, Burmese term < Sanskrit नाडी (nāḍī, “a measure of time”) < naḍa type of reed

phaʔ Pairs စုံ /sòʊɴ/, ရန် /jàɴ/ < PST *dzum~tsum "pair" > OC 雙 *[s]roŋ both, double > Proto-Tai *soːŋᴬ two > Thai สอง sɔːŋ˩˩˦, Lao ສອງ sɔːŋ˩(˧); ရန် has unknown etymology

gɔŋ Animals ကောင် koŋ [kàuɰ̃], as a noun "body, corpse, animal" < PST *guŋ > OC 躬 *k(r)uŋ body

khuʔ General ခု khu [kʰṵ] < N/A though the Chinese term is mentioned: 個 OC *kˤa[r]-s, MC kah general classifier

Example sentences with classifiers listed in the text, with Burmese translations:

two eyes - mjaciʔ najphaʔ - မျက်လုံး တစ်စုံ myaklumH taʔsṵ example phrase taken directly from wiktionary, but there is another term that directly corresponds to Marma term for eye, though without example sentences မျက်စိ /mjɛʔsḭ/, first syllable from < PST *mjək > OC 目 *C.m(r)[u]k, Tib. མིག mig

three horses - mˈraŋ θuŋgɔŋ - မြင်း သုံးကောင် mjɪ́ɴ θóʊɰ̃kàuɰ̃

three eggs - uʔ θuŋ luŋ - ဥ သုံးလုံး ʔṵ θóʊɰ̃lóuɰ̃ < PST *ʔu egg, bird according to STEDT but at the time of writing this, the website is down

five eggs - uʔ ŋa luːŋ - ဥ ငါးလုံး ʔṵ ŋálóuɰ̃

three cows - nuwa θuŋgɔŋ - နွား သုံးကောင် nwá θóʊɰ̃kàuɰ̃ < PST *ŋwə > OC 牛 *[ŋ]ʷə

five cows - nuwa ŋaːgɔŋ - နွား ငါးကောင် nwá ŋákàuɰ̃

three rivers - khjɔŋ θuŋ khjuŋ - မြစ် mjɪʔ, there is the term ချောင်း khyáung which is stated in wiktionary "creek, stream, brook, rivulet"

three sticks - r̥ɔkʔ ʄojθuŋ khjɔːŋ - တုတ် toʊʔ, term does not match with Marma

five sticks - r̥ɔkʔ ʄojŋaː khjɔːŋ - တုတ် toʊʔ

(Rashel, 2008, pp.153-154)

Abbreviations

PST = Proto-Sino-Tibetan

OC = Old Chinese

#chinese #tibetan #burmese #marma #etymology #grammar #numbers

Words for cooking in the Samojedischer Wörtschatz

SW = Samojedischer Wörtschatz, while the number after SW indicates the page number 1. SW81 *lɒkəjm kochen, aufkochen (inch.) cook, bring to boil, (en. lahumaro erwärmt werden, laxod, вскипеть, neT. aor.sg.3 laxoma (es fing an zu kochen) began to cook, der. laxombasy кипеть, vgl.auch. ? loxorcy быстро течь, neW. rozumsy anfangen zu kochen (begin to cook), mt. logomʒista кипит вода der. *lɒkəjmtɒ kochen (tr.) (en. laxodasˈ вскипятить to boil, neT. laxomdasy, neF. imp.sg.2.obj. roxomtāt, mt. logomdam" варю I boil, loomdat" растопляю I melt

2. SW123 *pi (durch Kochen) reifen boil while cooking (ng. fîʔem aor.sg.1, neT. pyisy, neF. pisy, km. prs.sg.1 philjæm), SW124 *piræ kochen (tr.), braten aor.sg.1.obj. firijeama, neT. pyiryesy, neF. pirryisy, sk. pirɯqo, km. pCɯrɪljɛm to bake < UEW735 *peje itr./tr., gives additional meanings for Sam. like gar (done/ cooked) sein/ warden

3. SW118 *pæt(3)- in den Topf legen (ng. aor.sg.1obj. fadiˈema, neT. pyadasy, neF. pĕataɕ, sk. potqo, km. pCɒljam cook/ boil, kb. prs.sg.1. padlam" I boil), furthermore if we look at individual entries directly from dictionaries of Samoyedic languages: Selkup 431 pōt- ins Wasser setzen, in den Kessel legen, das Netz auslegen (put in water, put in the kettle, cast a net, I assume for fishing) (Alatalo, 2004, p.66)

Nenets "ПЯДАСЬ гл., I, II спр., I кл., 1 гр. 1) опустить, положить, высыпать в воду; 2) поставить (сети): ПУ Мань поhгами пядадм’ – я поставил сеть; ПУ Хабарта’ хабахад сэдавы пи”мямда hани’ пядада – Снова расставил штаны, сшитые из шкуры лося; Я Поhгана” тюку яхадандо’ нялкапа”на” сава, тайкуй халяда таняна поhг” хэвувна пядабана” сава hэванзер’ hа (Л. Лапцуй) – Сети с этого места нам лучше снять, вон около тех сетей, где есть рыба, расставить хорошо бы; 3) заварить (о чае): ПУ Сайм’ пядась – Заварить чай." (ПЯДАСЬ gl., 1st, 2nd spr., 1st cl., 1st gr. 1) to lower, to put, to pour into water; 2) to set (nets): ПУ Мань похгами пядам’ – I set the net; ПУ Хабарта’ хабахад сэдавы пи”мямда гани’ пядада – I set up the pants made of moose skin again; Я Похгана” тюку яхадандо’ нялкапа”на” сава, такийкуй халяда таняна похг” хэвувна пядана” сава hэванзер’ ha (L. Laptsuy) – It would be better for us to remove the nets from this place, it would be good to set them up near those nets where there are fish; 3) to brew (about tea): ПУ Саим’ пядася – To brew tea.) (Burkovka & Koshkareva, 2010, p.148)

the Samoyedic root *pät3 put in pot was borrowed from Turkic, Proto-Turkic *pïdă > Common Turkic *pïd-kaʎă > hïdïːʃ (Ünal, 2023, p.222) (I am simply using the form of the word recorded in the source)

References

Alatalo, J. (2004). Sölkupisches Wörterbuch aus Aufzeichnungen von Kai Donner, U. T. Sirelius und Jarmo Alatalo. Lexica Societatis Fenno-Ugricae XXX. ISBN 952-5150-76-3

SW = Janhunen, J. (1977) Samojedischer Wortschatz – gemeinsamojedische etymologien, Castrenianumin toimitteita 17, Helsinki.TMN

Ünal, O. (2023). Nova Turco-Samoiedica. Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen, 68:217-235. https://doi.org/10.33339/fuf.120933

Буркова, С. И., & Кошкарева, Н. Б. (2010). Диалектологический словарь ненецкого языка: Около 3600 слов. Баско. https://books.google.com.bd/books?iðp7bL0QEACAAJ

#samoyedic #uralic #cooking #etymology #nenets #selkup #ненецкого языка #словарь #ненецкий язык

Lyrics from: https://dubdb.fandom.com/wiki/Butterflix_Power_(Winx_Club)#Hungarian_(Nickelodeon)

Oh-oh-oh-oh Szárnyalás – Soaring (Used in place of Butterflix)

Nincs más út most csak oda fel – There is no other way but up there

Vágtató, szárnyaló – Racing, soaring

Ha nincs más út hát gyere figyelj – If there is no other way then come listen

Oh-oh-oh

Egy kérdés csak gyere felelj Félsz e még? – One question just come answer, are you afraid?

Kék az ég – The sky is blue

Nincs több szó csak gyere ne várj – There are no more words just come don’t wait

Égbe szállj – Fly into the sky

Oh-oh-oh-oh

Minden oly csodás – Everything so wonderful

Csupa Szárnyalás – All soaring

Oh-oh-oh-oh Szárnyalás

Oh-oh-oh-oh

Velünk nincs megállj csak az égbe szállj – with us there is no stopping, just fly into the sky Oh-oh-oh-oh Szárnyalás

Notes

nincs - there is no más - other, different, thus "nincs más + noun" = "there is no other [NOUN]" több - more, many, therefore "nincs több + [NOUN]" = "there are no more [NOUN]s", whereas in Hungarian, the plural noun suffix is not used szárnyal - to soar, with szárnyalás being the verbal noun, and szárnaló is the present participle vágtat - (from wiktionary) gallop, race, zoom (movement of a vehicle), similarly vágtató is the present participle csodás - wonderful < csoda < Slavic čuda miracle, so equivalent to Slavic čudesno (Ru. чуде́сно, BCMS čȕdesan) Case suffixes used: égbe < ég-ILL into the sky

#magyar #hungarian #winx_club #winx #butterflix #translation #dub #dubbing #Youtube

linguisticsizfun

Colours in Rakhine

Rubythesunshine - I found this channel to learn Rakhine and my goal is to build wordlists from there, comparing it to Standard Burmese as Standard Burmese has more resources.

Etymology is sourced from Wiktionary, after inputting the Burmese terms in the search bar.

An asterisk indicates a term from Proto-Sino-Tibetan

OC = Old Chinese

Rakhine – English – Burmese – etymology

အရောင် - colour - အရောင် - Areal word. compared to OC 朗 *k.rˤaŋʔ "clear, bright". connected to 亮 *[r]aŋ-s which is said to be from AA *raaŋʔ “light; to shine”, Khmer រង rɔɔŋ “be light, bright"

ပန်းရောင် - Pink - ပန်း - < *baːr to bloom, flower

အနိန် ရောင် - Red - နီ - < *r-ni, compared to OC 怩 *nr[əj] ashamed, 恥 *n̥rəʔ shame, make ashamed

အဝါရောင် - Yellow - ဝါ - < *b/s-wa bright, white, yellow, 黃 yellow

အပြာရောင် - Blue - ပြာ - Wiktionary only lists comparisons with outdated Old Chinese phonology: 翡 *bɯls kingfisher, 白 *bˤrak white

အစီမ်းရောင် - Green - စိမ်း - < *dz(y)im raw, unripe, green

လိမမော်ရောင် - Orange - လိမ္မော် - < Malay limau though it refers to orange fruit in Burmese

ခရမ်းရောင် - Purple - ခရမ်း - equivalent to eggplant, which is comparable to Bangla begun eggplant -> beguni, purple. Wiktionary: “藍 (OC *ɡ·raːm, “indigo”). The first syllable bears some resemblance to 茄 (OC *ɡa, *ɡal, *kraːl, “eggplant”), seems to be an area word. Compare Old Chinese 紺 (OC *kɯːms, “purple, violet”)”

အညိုရောင် - Brown - ညို - < *s-ŋow is listed but the PST term is mentioned to only refer to light colours so there is a discrepancy in meaning

အဖြူရောင် - White - ဖြူ - < *plu white

အမည်းရောင် - Black - မည်း - < *s-maŋ ~ s-mak, OC: 墨 (*C.mˁək, “ink”), 黑 (*m̥ˁək, dial. *m̥ˁ- › xˁ- (B-S), “black”)

ခဲရောင် - Grey - မီးခိုး - Two different words, Rakhine term in Wiktionary gives "lead, graphite" < *kar, Burmese term means "smoke" < *məj fire + *kuw smoke/ suffer from smoke; *məj fire has been compared to OC 火 *qʷʰˤəjʔ but the initial seems too complex, dialectal 𤈦 *m̥əjʔ fits better and may come from **sməj

Complex colours

စီမ်းပြာရောင် - teal < green+blue

အပြာနုရောင် - baby blue < blue ပြာ+light နု

နု < *now tender, soft, OC 柔 *nu soft

အပြာရင့်ရောင် - navy blue < blue ပြာ+deep ရင့်

ရင့် deep, also mature, late (in pregnancy) < *rkaŋ to be hard, tough

နက်ပြာရောင် - indigo < black/deep နက်+blue ပြာ

နက် black < *nək black, evil, OC 匿 *nr[ə]k to hide, 慝 *n̥ˤək evil

ကြက်သွီးရောင် - maroon < cf. Burmese ကြက်သွေး, there is a Burmese Wikipedia page, the English is "crimson". Individually ကြက် = chicken *k-rak, Wiktionary states it is ancient onomatopoeia, သွေး = blood < *swiʔ, but would a term "chicken blood" be viable as a colour?

ပန်းခရမ်းရောင် - magenta < pink+purple

Commentary

The Rakhine terms from the video are usually prefixed with the verbal noun prefix a- and end in the word for colour, raung. The Burmese terms are the bare roots you would find in a dictionary, not how they would be used in a sentence.

linguisticsizfun

Transliteration

Rakhine – English – Burmese

Most Rakhine terms are transliterated twice to show the differences between one-to-one transliteration of the letters, and the actual pronunciation of it all. For Burmese terms, if they are transliterated twice, only one is a transliteration and the second is IPA, aka phonetic script.

အရောင် araung - colour - အရောင် ayàung ʔəjàʊɴ

ပန်းရောင် pánraung pǽnraung - Pink - ပန်း páɴ

အနိန်ရောင် aninraung aneinraung - Red - နီ nī nì

အဝါရောင် awāraung - Yellow - ဝါ wā wà

အပြာရောင် aprāraung - Blue - ပြာ pyā pjà

အစီမ်းရောင် asī́mraung aséimraung - Green - စိမ်း séɪɴ

လိမမော်ရောင် limmauraung leimmauraung - Orange - လိမ္မော် lèɪɴmɔ̀

ခရမ်းရောင် kharámraung kharǽmraung - Purple - ခရမ်း khayám kʰəjáɴ

အညိုရောင် aɲuiraung aɲoraung - Brown - ညို ɲò

အဖြူရောင် aphrūraung aphrùraung - White - ဖြူ phyù pʰjù

အမည်းရောင် amáññraung amɛ́raung - Black - မည်း máññ mɛ́

ခဲရောင် kheraung - Grey - မီးခိုး míɡó

စီမ်းပြာရောင် sī́m séinpràraung - teal

အပြာနုရောင် aprānuraung aprànuraung - baby blue

အပြာရင့်ရောင် aprāra̰ngraung apràrɔngraung - navy blue

နက်ပြာရောင် nakprāraung naʔpràraung - indigo

ကြက်သွီးရောင် krakθwī́raung kraʔθwíraung - maroon

ပန်းခရမ်းရောင် pánkharámraung pǽnkharǽmraung – magenta

Tones:

long vowel = low tone

-h = high tone

short vowel = no tone/ middle

#rakhine #arakanese #burmese #language #color #colour #colors #colours

Colours in Rakhine

Rubythesunshine - I found this channel to learn Rakhine and my goal is to build wordlists from there, comparing it to Standard Burmese as Standard Burmese has more resources.

Etymology is sourced from Wiktionary, after inputting the Burmese terms in the search bar.

An asterisk indicates a term from Proto-Sino-Tibetan

OC = Old Chinese

Rakhine – English – Burmese – etymology

ပန်းရောင် - Pink - ပန်း - < *baːr to bloom, flower

အနိန် ရောင် - Red - နီ - < *r-ni, compared to OC 怩 *nr[əj] ashamed, 恥 *n̥rəʔ shame, make ashamed

အဝါရောင် - Yellow - ဝါ - < *b/s-wa bright, white, yellow, 黃 yellow

အပြာရောင် - Blue - ပြာ - Wiktionary only lists comparisons with outdated Old Chinese phonology: 翡 *bɯls kingfisher, 白 *bˤrak white

အစီမ်းရောင် - Green - စိမ်း - < *dz(y)im raw, unripe, green

လိမမော်ရောင် - Orange - လိမ္မော် - < Malay limau though it refers to orange fruit in Burmese

အညိုရောင် - Brown - ညို - < *s-ŋow is listed but the PST term is mentioned to only refer to light colours so there is a discrepancy in meaning

အဖြူရောင် - White - ဖြူ - < *plu white

အမည်းရောင် - Black - မည်း - < *s-maŋ ~ s-mak, OC: 墨 (*C.mˁək, “ink”), 黑 (*m̥ˁək, dial. *m̥ˁ- › xˁ- (B-S), “black”)

Complex colours

စီမ်းပြာရောင် - teal < green+blue

အပြာနုရောင် - baby blue < blue ပြာ+light နု

နု < *now tender, soft, OC 柔 *nu soft

အပြာရင့်ရောင် - navy blue < blue ပြာ+deep ရင့်

ရင့် deep, also mature, late (in pregnancy) < *rkaŋ to be hard, tough

နက်ပြာရောင် - indigo < black/deep နက်+blue ပြာ

နက် black < *nək black, evil, OC 匿 *nr[ə]k to hide, 慝 *n̥ˤək evil

ပန်းခရမ်းရောင် - magenta < pink+purple

Commentary

#rakhine #arakanese #burmese #language #etymology #color #colour #colors #colours #Youtube

Random Bangla Etymologies 1

এগন, এগান এগুনো, এগোনো egana, egāna, eguno, egono Dasa: Bangala bhashara abhidhana states it comes from অগ্রগমন agragamana (Dasa, p.378), though when I checked the Turner IA comparative dictionary, I did not find it under the entry 70 *agragamaṇa 'going in front'. However I can believe the Bangla dictionary. agragamana > hypothetical *aggagaãna > *aggaa(n)na- then converted into a verb.

Definition and usage: I have always seen this verb used only in the participle form as a phrasal verb এগিয়ে যাওয়া egiye jaowa, and it simply means to go forwards, move to the front, such as in "move to the front of the line", or to mention a vehicle will go in front, and also used to mean "overtake" or vehicles on the road. "এগিয়ে যান না" egiye jan na = do not overtake (seen on road signs).

এড়া, এড়ানো eṛa, eṛano, according to Turner comparative dictionary, < 2511 ḗṭatē 'goes', as the Bangla entry is listed there "B. eṛā 'to let loose, reject', eṛāna 'to avoid'", and further etymology states [Cf. iḍvara- m. 'bull to be set at liberty' ~ itvará- 'id.' lex.?]. If I search for itvara, I get 1565 itvan- which is the -tva participle of i- "to go", which has an Indo-European root, but if this is really the root, then I need to search for instances of spontaneous retroflexisation in MIA. I did find one paper called "Burrow, T., 1971. Spontaneous cerebrals in Sanskrit. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Lan[1]guages 34, 538-559." maybe I will read that and discuss it.

References

Online version of Jnanendramohana Dasa's 'Bangala Bhashara abhidana' from the Digital Dictionaries of South Asia

Online version of R.L. Turner's 'A Comparative Dictionary of Indo-Aryan Languages' from the Digital Dictionaries of South Asia

#bangla #bengali #dictionary #etymology #random_bangla_etymologies

Timagnah Terjama

Terjemaan Inggeris

Yari na ako biyaun – I am here now

Timagnah na magbalik – To start all over again

Ha sabab in hambuk tao – Someone is the reason

Nagpaulih sin sakit – to recover from what will hurt/ to heal wounds

Ikaw in pasalan – You are the reason

Nakakinam kakuyagan – that I feel joy

Ikaw in babai – You are the woman

Malugay ko tiyatagaran – whom I’ve been waiting for a long time

Sah mayta’ biyuan dakaw dimatung – But why have you come now?

Lugay ko nagtagad – I’ve waited for a long time

Miyabut pila tahun – How many years have come

Magsukul ako sin yari nakaw – I am thankful for you being here

Dayang – My love

Hibaytah ko kaymu – I tell you

Sin dih na ako mabayah sin malawah kaw – that I don’t want to lose you

Hinangun ko in katan – I do everything

Hasupaya dih kaw lumayuh – In order for you to not go far away

Important Note

The translation was not made by me on my own. It was based on videos of Malay and Indonesian translations as I am not familiar with the grammar of any Philippine group languages. The Wikipedia page on Tausug grammar was also used to help with my translation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGfI3n9LyEM&list=RDrGfI3n9LyEM&start_radio=1 (Malay translation)

https://youtu.be/jfnMaDvvJ5s?si=20LuQDCfcWNb0qJV (Indonesian translation)

Yari na ako biyaun – Aku sudah di sini sekarang

Timagnah na magbalik – memulai kembali – memulakan semula

Ha sabab in hambuk tao – di sebab seseorang – oleh karena seseorang

Nagpaulih sin sakit – menyembuh kan sakit – yang mengubati luka

Ikaw in pasalan – kau lah penyebab nya

Nakakinam kakuyagan – dapat rasa kebahagian – merasai kebahagian

Ikaw in babai – engkau lah wanita

Malugay ko tiyatagaran – sudah lama ku tunggu

Sah mayta’ biyuan dakaw dimatung – tapi kenapa sekarang kau datang

Lugay ko nagtagad – lama ku menunggu

Miyabut pila tahun – sampai berapa tahun

Magsukul ako sin yari nakaw – aku berterimah kasih sebab – aku berterimah kasih karena kau di sini

Dayang - sayang

Hibaytah ko kaymu – aku bagi tahu dekat kau – ku beritahu padamu

Sin dih na ako mabayah sin malawah kaw – yang aku tidak mahu kau menghilang – yang aku sudah tak mahu engkau menghilang

Hinangun ko in katan – ku lakukan semua nya – ku lakukan semuanya Hasupaya dih kaw lumayuh – supaya kau tak menjauh – agar kau tak menjauh

#translation #vocabulary #austronesian #tausug #malay #indonesian #Youtube

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