Thread

1. kleton · 1789709109 · focus · HN ↗

   > because the Proto-Indo-European language arose in the landlocked steppes, it had no need for—and has no securely reconstructable word for—‘sea’.

   No, it is mori, attested in marine, muir, maryadah, mal, morje, etc in farflung IE tongues today.

   1. TFNA · 1789709548 · focus · HN ↗

      There are decades of scholarship on those cognates, and a longstanding view that in Proto-Indo-European the word meant simply "large body of water" and not specifically "sea". Moreover, it may be a substrate word borrowed into European IE languages, as the affinity of that Sanskrit word to this cognate set is not very certain.

      1. EdwardDiego · 1789714944 · focus · HN ↗

         Yep, it's the same in Māori, a Polynesian language, where "moana" refers to oceans and large lakes alike.

         What's really interesting is that in Hawaiian, a close relative with some sound shifts (k/t, l/r, n/ng, so taboo is kapu in Hawaiian, in Māori, tapu, path is ala / ara, the God of the sea is Kanaloa/Tangaroa) they have more than one word for ocean, kai is coastal waters, moana is the deep ocean.

         But it makes sense in the geographical context of both societies and how they evolved to their environment, the Hawaiian archipelago is made up of multiple smaller islands separated by waters exposed to the full force of the Pacific, while the archipelago of New Zealand is dominated by two large landmasses separated by a narrow strait that together are about the same area as Germany.

         So the Hawaiians remained more tightly wedded to the sea to build their archipelagan societies than the Māori did.

         In fact, the Māori lost the knowledge to build ocean-going vessels like the ones that had carried them to New Zealand within a few hundred years because there was no need for it. And their language lost the distinction between "coastal waters" and "ocean" while Hawaiian retained them.

         While we have evidence of Māori traveling to Raoul in the Kermadecs early on, as classical Māori culture evolved on much much larger islands, their technology focus on boats switched from ocean going vessels to coastal travel and river travel.

         In fact, while "Wai", water, is often considered the Māori word for "river", there's another word that also means river in Māori:

         "Ara" - path.

         (Of course, it still means a regular path)

         1. dmurray · 1789722098 · focus · HN ↗

            Are there any large lakes in Polynesia? The Māori, Hawaiians, etc are one group of people I would expect to make a distinction between lakes (puddles, really) and open ocean.

            1. nephihaha · 1789727431 · focus · HN ↗

               Yes, there are many substantial ones in New Zealand. Lake Taupo is an obvious one, and there are some large ones in Otago and Southland which are not abutting the sea.

               I would imagine Polynesian languages would distinguish between fresh water bodies and salt water ones, since they need to be able to drink. Even small islands can have pools.

               [Edit to add: much of Polynesia is of volcanic origin, so freshwater crater lakes are a feature of these landscapes.]

               1. EdwardDiego · 1789736011 · focus · HN ↗

                  > Polynesian languages would distinguish between fresh water bodies and salt water ones

                  Māori distinguished water _quality_ without reference to whether or not it was a lake or sea or river.

                  Wai tai: Salt water

                  Wai māori: Fresh water, water for regular daily usage

                  Waiora: Pure water that restored/healed a person

                  Waikino: Dangerous / polluted water

                  Waitapu: Sacred water

                  Which makes sense right? You can have a river that is significantly salty and hence unpotable some distance from the sea, depending on the strength of the tides - likewise you can have a lake near the sea that intermingles with seawater to the extent that it's brackish.

                  So Māori naming was more based on utility than the geographical distinctions than we're used to in the Eurocentric worldview.

                  And this also extended to their view on land ownership, which caused so many issues when Europeans turned up and wanted to "buy" "land" from the local iwi/tribes - a chief would grant a European the exclusive rights to grazing in an area, and the European would interpret it as exclusive ownership, and then get angry when the Māori would continue harvesting tuna/eels or birds on "their" land that they'd "purchased".

                  1. nephihaha · 1789754183 · focus · HN ↗

                     I am not sure what you mean by "Eurocentric" here. These distinctions exist in most Asian languages and probably in other continental landmasses.

                     Peoples living on remote oceanic islands are the exception rather than the rule, and lost the words for larger freshwater bodies because they didn't tend to encounter them, just as some inland peoples had no words for oceans. You've even mentioned a distinction... "brackish". It is pretty important to know if one can drink water or not.

                     By the way, in some parts of Europe these distinctions don't quite happen either. "Loch" is used for branches of the sea as much as freshwater. In some places "lake" and "lago" are used for both. In fact, without looking it up, "lagoon" is probably related to the Romance word for "lake". River isn't reserved for freshwater in European languages. The Menai Straits are Afon Menai (Menai River) in Welsh. In tradition, the ocean was described as a river encircling the continents.

                     "Which makes sense right?"

                     Most of them do, except waitapu. Taboos often make little sense, and the reasons can be long forgotten. Sometimes they are just dangerous stretches of water. We used to have notions of taboo here too.

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