I came across this page today: peoplenews.tw/news/113fdedc- … 1e4281eddc
It listed many Taigi words that I had no idea were Aboriginal loanwords in Taigi.
There are a lot of place names that are loaned from Aboriginal languages, such as Taiwan, Madou, Dalongdong, Guishan, Shekou and so on. Other types of loanwords are a lot less obvious. These loanwords primarily come in two forms, phonological or borrowing the meaning of the original. In English, junk and wok would be phonological, and long time no see would be borrowing the original meaning.
I’ve been told that the Taigi word to refer to someone’s own husband or wife, khan-tshiú (牽手), is actually an aboriginal loanword. I have no way of verifying the care. In the article above, there are some more convincing loanwords from the Sirayan language.
Many worlds in Tainan Taigi are long regarded as a legacy from the Southern Min languages, when in reality they were borrowed Sirayan words. Examples:
English : Tailo : Hanji : Sirayan Origin
Warm water : tsuí la-lûn siǒ : 水拉崙燒 : Ralum is water in Sirayan
Moso Bamboo : bâ-lî tik (also bâ-jî tik) : 貓狸竹 (also 麻兒竹) : Varig is bamboo in Sirayan
Heteropoda venatoria (spiders with tall legs) : lâ-giâ : 旯犽 (also written as 蟧蜈 and 拉牙) : Rawa is spider in Sirayan
Milk fish : sat-ba̍k-hî : 虱目魚 : Sasat mata means fish with one eye in Sirayan.
Exmaples from wikipedia:
Dumbler : a-se : 阿西 : Assey refers to people not very bright in Sirayan
Possible exmaples:
Meat : bah : (肉?) : Vavui (Bahui) is how most aboriginals refer to pig. 肉 should be pronunced as jio̍k/lio̍k (or ngiok) in Sinitic languages. If bah isn’t Aboriginal, it still isn’t Sinitic.
Crazy : pha-tai : (?) : Patay (Patey) is dead in most aboriginal languages. Some say it’s a malformed usage of the Japanese word Katai (hard), although that would require two phone changes.