--- cafaristeir <cafaristeir@...> wrote:

> Franca of the Indian Ocean, it spread to Swahili and
> Central African
> Languages with the famous word "bwana" = "sir"!

This is really one of the joys of working with
language. I don't know if it can be definitely shown
that "ban" and "bwana" are etymologically related, as
one word list I found said that bwana is either from
Persian "ban" or from Arabic "abuna". But in any case,
it is interesting to find that words travel like this.
I recently learned that the Japanese word for mummy,
"miira", comes from the same word as myrrh in English.
I sometimes think that perhaps if we could trace back
all words to their origins, we could come up with a
very universal vocabulary. Of course, it is somewhat
of a pipe dream, because there are so many changes
that have taken place along the way.

Jens Wilkinson
Neo Patwa language: http://patwa.pbwiki.com



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