Chrysti The Wordsmith: Malay Words

Greetings This is Christie the wordsmith. Europeans have been trading with Malaysians and their neighboring Indonesian Islanders since the 16th century. The Dutch and the British over many years of commercial and colonial contact adopted a number of words from the various Malay languages and dialects some denote plants and animals. Others indicate trade goods. For example the Malay gang gang which means striped is the source of the English gingham or cotton cloth characterized by a plaid pattern. The word given appeared in print in English early in the seventeenth century. The great ape of the rain forests of Borneo and Sumatra so closely resembles humans that it inspired Malay speakers to give it the moniker orang u tan meaning man of the woods. The word orangutan was first recorded by a non Malaysian. A Dutch physician in 60 91 and made its way to English documents by sixty ninety nine bamboo. The word referring to the giant grass of the tropics is also of Malay origin. The word was first recorded by the

Portuguese in 15 63 as mam mam be you. And it found its modern English spelling bamboo. BMB 0 0 0 by seventeen forty eight. Early in the 17th century English speakers adopted the term Gong a Malay word for a hanging bronze disk used as a percussion instrument Gong is a melee on a model piano or a word that imitates a sound from Montana State University in Bozeman. This is Christy the wordsmith. CHRISTIE The wordsmith a sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry Web dot com.