Fun Fact: the malay word for “island” is “pulau.”
As in Pulau Penang.
I always wondered if there was some Indonesian influence in places like Palau, Micronesia, etc.
As in Pulau Penang.
I always wondered if there was some Indonesian influence in places like Palau, Micronesia, etc.
I haven't learned too deeply about what athropologists generally think of palau's original settlement and the carolines in general but likely my ancestors were part of the Austronesian migration as other commentors said, although most of the maps I see show it coming from the philipines instead of indonesia/malaysia, so it might be from the same original source albeit on different branches. We share some similar words (babii=pig and I find a striking similarity between "makan" and "mengang" which is palauan for "eating") but the language structure seems quite different to me than bahasa melayu/bahasa indonesia generally. Also, given the cross colonisation/migration of colonised people as labourers from before WWII, I'm not really sure which words are palauan or just imports from SEA generally in the modern era after european and japanese contact. For example, we eat rambutan which we call "rambotang" although I think the fruits were just imported by the colonisers.
That said, I now live in singapore and the first time I saw images of Batak houses it was jarring because they look a hell lot like our traditional chief houses called "bai" [1], and I had never seen anything else like them in elsewhere in the world. Due to historical reasons since the end of WWII we don't have many dealing with indonesia today.
[1] http://underwatercolours.com/travel-tales/the-palauan-bai
The indigenous people of the Mariana Islands built somewhat similar dwellings atop a foundation of large stone structures called latte[1]. The latte today is a distinct symbol of Chamorro[2] identity (e.g. prominently represented in the flag of the CNMI[3] and surrounded by a mwarmwar, a symbol of Refaluwasch[4] identity).
P.S. Not Belauan, but sis-in-law is. Almost certainly just dox'd myself as well. I suspect the aggregate of us are truly ultra minorities in these tech backwaters.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latte_stone
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamorro_people
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_Northern_Mariana_I...
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Palau#Etymology
These are both austronesian languages and you can see they inherit from "proto-Malayo-Polynesian" so there is indeed a link, even if this specific word may have evolved from something different.
I suspect something similar at work. But I could be wrong.