Whence these words?

Language learning: How to speak Toki Pona, translation problems, advice, memory aids, tools and methods to learn Toki Pona and other languages faster
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jan Pilo
Posts: 42
Joined: Thu Apr 21, 2016 9:59 am
Location: Polska

Re: Whence these words?

Post by jan Pilo »

However "oko" and "ona" wouldn't need any tp-ization, if they were taken from eg. Polish (exacly the same spelling and pronunciation - eye and she)
Probably your interlocutors spoke Slavic languages other than Croatian (which was the official source for Sonja). I raised that point from the same reason: I don't know any Croatian. They make maybe a few percent of the whole Slavic population, while roots of words are often the same.
Piotr M.
janKipo
Posts: 3064
Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 2:20 pm

Re: Whence these words?

Post by janKipo »

Although the official line is that 'ona' comes from Croatian, there are other stories that suggest it comes from French 'on' or Esperanto 'oni'. But these may arise from the fact that people use 'ona' in this way illegitimately, rather than using a proper 'jan ni' or so at the beginning.
jan_olen
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Aug 14, 2016 11:45 am

Re: Whence these words?

Post by jan_olen »

re: tan

I always thought it came from 从, the very common Mandarin word for "from." (I'm an Mandarin-second-language speaker)

Pinyin: cóng
IPA: tsʰʊŋ2
toki pona phonology: tan

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%BB%8E#Chinese

re: sinpin

I don't speak Cantonese, but an infrequent Mandarin word for "Front side" is 前边, which seems plausible:

Pinyin: qiánbiān
IPA: tɕʰi̯ɛn2pi̯ɛn5
toki pona phonology: syenpyen, or sinpin

...And which in Cantonese looks about right: 前邊

Jyutping: cin4 bin1

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%89%8D%E9%82%8A
jan_olen
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Aug 14, 2016 11:45 am

Re: Whence these words?

Post by jan_olen »

Oh, also these:

jan (Cantonese)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%BA%BA
(Jyutping): jan4, jan4-2, jan4-1

ko (Cantonese)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%86%8F
(Jyutping): gou1

kon (Cantonese)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%A9%BA
(Jyutping): hung1
*Note: The Mandarin pronunciation for this same character (and same meaning of air, space, nothing) is even closer to kon: (Pinyin): kōng (kong1)
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