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Comment by teleforce | Hacker News Reader

Fun facts, the closest to ancient Roman fish sauce (garum) in ingredients today is probably Vietnamese fish sauce[1][2]. This is probably not only the source for the umami flavor but also the natural salty ingredient without the modern salt. This is not surprising since majority of Vietnam today (Central and South Vietnam) was ruled by Champa kingdoms until 16th century but Chams people were then evicted by the Nguyen lords from the North. Chams, Malay and Indonesian languages (top ten most popular languages in the world) has the word "garam", for salt and it is probably originated from the word garum.

If you want how ancient Pompeii lived and ate, please check this excellent video by Absolute History[3].

[1]https://scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3094604/did-fi...

[2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garum

[3]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSw7eoBbM0U

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They still make a fish sauce in Italy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colatura_di_alici

I'd be very surprised if they were connected. Garam sira is apparently well attested as the origin and derivations from both words are common across the austronesian family. Similar sounds have been reconstructed in the proto- language as well. Not an expert here, but these sorts of false cognates are common enough and the distances far enough that it makes me suspicious. Do you have a more substantial source?

Based on the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database, the word sira is the common word for all Proto-Malayo-Polynesian, Proto-Chamic and Proto-Malayic for salt not garam [1]. Indonesian Aceh language, however, diverged from Chams around 1st century AD has word garam for salt. This indicates that garam most probably a loan word. Apparently, the most common words for salt in Austronesian language family (largest family of languages in the world) are sira, garam and masin/asin. These three words exist in modern Malay-Indonesian languages namely garam for salt, masin for salty and sira for salt-lick.

[1]https://abvd.shh.mpg.de/austronesian/

There's an origin note on the word in Malay, which indicates the root of garam is "garam sira", grains of salt. Do you have something discussing how garam could instead be a loanword, because nothing I've seen indicates this.

Have you checked the database? It contains basic 210 words for many major Austronesian based languages, and conveniently it includes salt as one of basic words inside the database. You can even search and cross check the basic word e.g. salt across more than one thousand Austronesian languages.

Another fun fact, the oldest known source of written Cham language is the Dong Yeng Chau inscription tablet written in 4th century AD recently discovered in Central Vietnam. This Old Cham inscription written in an Old Southern Brahmi script and even older than Old Malay language. Amazingly it's still very much understandable if you know the modern Malay-Indonesian language (top ten most used languages)[1]. As a comparison the most studied language in the Americas, Mayan Languages that was spoken around the time of Old Cham, its modern version is not widely being used now.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%90%C3%B4ng_Y%C3%AAn_Ch%C...

garam and garum do seem similar, but how latin word for something lost in medieval times could've come to indonesian language?

I'd imagine through trade, much like how it seems to be the explanation for why most languages call "tea" some variation of te, cha, or chai.

Yes most probably through trade. Check the provided video link on the ancient Pompeii, based on the archeological evidences they had trading activities with other Asian countries including India. It is already known that the Chams already settled in Vietnam during Pompeii time. Their ports popularity at the time probably similar to Singapore today and Singapore is currently the busiest port in the world. Another fun fact is that the Chams ancient capital city is called Simhapura or Lion City, and Singapore original name is Singapura. My gut feeling is that Champa was either playing the role of Singapore today or conquered Singapore, at the time of Pompeii.

There’s at least one loanword which arrived in Latin from a Trans–New Guinea language [0]. Latin→Indonesian doesn’t sound at all implausible to me, though equally it may be just coincidence.

[0] https://www.academia.edu/25619010/Things_your_classics_maste...

Latin is quite a strange language. It never really died, or it did die but with a slow and uneven death. The example you being is emblematic: as the international language of scholars in Europe, when the new word "Musa" gets adopted in the 18th century from the arabic "mauz", on one hand sure, it's technically Latin and thus yes technically there is a Latin word whose etymology traces back to an Austronesian root.

I'm the other hand though it clearly doesn't mean that this happened during ancient Roman times, which is the conclusion one would easily jump to under the assumption that Latin really died long long ago.

Lingua latina mortua est, vivat lingua latina!

I’m pretty sure I saw somewhere that it was borrowed into Latin in ancient times, though perhaps I was wrong. Still, a TNG→Arabic borrowing is nearly as good as a TNG→Latin one.

Are we talking about the name of a fruit that comes from the same place where the name was borrowed from? If so, why is that surprising?

Yes, we are. The only surprising thing about this is that one wouldn’t prima facie expect a loan into any European language from a New Guinean language before the Age of Exploration, and this particular word went through more intermediate languages than usual. Other than those features, there’s nothing particularly unusual about this.

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