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From: kriha_p@actrix.gen.nz (Paul J. Kriha)
Subject: Re: Borrowed Words
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Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 14:39:52 GMT
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In article <3mst7j$hll@news4.primenet.com>,
   jpmork@primenet.com (James P Mork) wrote:
>Peter Ludemann (ludemann@netcom.com) wrote:
>
>: Nice guess, but wrong.
>
>: The potato was introduced into Japan by the Dutch, who were sailing
>: out of a base in Java.  The Japanese thought that Java was the source
>: for western things, so the word "jagaruta" (from an older word for
>: Jakarta) was sometimes used to mean "western".  "Imo" means sweet
>: potato (or yam), so "jaga-imi" means "western yam".
>
>: No reason for borrowing the word for potato.  The French have "pomme
>: de terre" (earth apple) and the Germans have "Kartoffel" (sp? I don't
>: have my German dictionary handy for an explanation of that one).

BTW,
Apart from "Kartoffel" Germans also call it "Erdapfel" (earth apple).

>
>Wow!  Doesnt even hurt to be wrong.  This is just fascinating stuff.
>An erroneous thought about tubers leads to a word in Japanese.  And 
>food diffusing via the Dutch in the South Seas.  This is almost as 
>surprising as Acapulco being the big entrepot for international trade.
>
>By the way:  my dictionary says "potato" itself is a variant of a Haitian 
>word "batata".  So, I wonder if the Incan word just disappeared or is the 
>word for potato in some other language.  In Scandinavia, the closely 

My Collins says: potato C16 from Spanish patata, from Taino batata.

>related languages have funny little quirks where they don't agree.  I 
>always wonder if that is a sign of archaisms that survived closely 
>related histories.  My mother said every VALLEY in Norway had a distinct 
>dialect because of the difficulty of travel.  So, it is easy for me to 
>imagine Incan words for potatoes surviving somewhere.  But since there 
>were 3,000+ varieties in Incan agriculture, it may be there were too MANY 
>words (like eskimo/snow thing)
>

PJK
