Sweet Potato

"Toward a Comparative Japanese-Austronesian I" by Takao Kawamoto demonstrates that Japanese is cognate with the Austronesian family of languages, the Pacific languages. The demonstration bases itself on pairing a few hundreds of words of Old Japanese (OJ) with words of Proto-Austronesian (PA) or one of its branches. What was this world like in those ancient times?

I have heard theories that in ancient Pre-Columbian times, Pacific Islanders made voyages reaching as far as the Pacific coasts of the Americas. I believe such did happen. So, there were likely contacts between Polynesian tribes and Amerindian tribes. "Linguistic Evidence for a Prehistoric Polynesia—Southern California Contact Event" by Kathryn Klar and Terry L. Jones expounds on the theme, mentioning the Amerindian language groups Chumashan and Gabrielino in southern California. Some Pre-Columbian contact between the Americas and Polynesia is evident from the ubiety of the South American sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) in Polynesian archaeological sites, most notably from Mangaia, Cook Islands (circa 1000 CE).

On a different theme, in recent days, I see some Latinos, here on Lulu Island. In Vancouver, where I lived previously, they are more prevalent than here. The Gringos want to promote Hispanicity, I am guessing. I find better examples of Spanish audio in my Social Media and electronic libraries. Spanish spoken by people in worker clothes is full of effervescent slang and colloquialisms.

Yesterday, at the Lulu Island pizzeria, a Hispanic in worker clothes said, "Duerme en la campaña." It means "He sleeps in the campaign," but campiña is the word for "countryside," and campana (without the tilde) means "bell." He knows that the Italian Chef Salvatore lives with his hybrid family in the beautiful Japanese verdant wooded countryside. He knows that I like siesta, here in suburbia. To me, people reminding of "sleeping" alludes either to Buddhist meditation or to Sheol-Hades as a place of unconscious dormancy for the dead in the beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses.

Different ethnicities have a distinctive body language. Lately, I have been noticing that Hispanics have their own body language. Maybe, the spoken language has an effect on the body. I know Japanese from Koreans and Chinese from also the body language. But yes, Hispanics have also their own.

2022-05-04