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Hi Ian, here the sword what is related to the scabbard.

Arjan

So "kamaran" seems to be correct.

This creates a brickwall.

In this context of a sword name, rather than a scabbard name, the words simply do not make sense. It is either specific dialect use, or a long standing error.

The answer:- field research.

Arjan:

I think we have exhausted your topic. Thanks for bringing to light this sword and its unusual name. Without further data, it seems we have indeed hit a "brick wall," as Alan has noted. It appears that the only reliable original observations we can find on the web are based on Robert Shelford's writings.

I have bookmarked this thread and hope we can come back to the subject when more data are available.

Regards,

Ian.

In my post #33 I spat the dummy.

I'd had enough. The whole tilang thing stands on shaky foundations and we could hypothesise, or worse still use a little bit of knowledge combined with some Wiki entries and create something entirely fictitious --- it has been done before.

But this thing has caught hold of my interest, and I have become annoyed by the fact that I cannot understand something that I should be able to understand.

So I think we can maybe continue to take a little bit of a poke at this question.

It seems this thing was collected by Robert Shelford. Shelford was a naturalist, not an ethnographer, not an anthropologist, and possibly his expertise in Malay was limited to pretty basic market Malay. It takes a lot of time to gain competence in a foreign language --- even the famed Raffles could only handle basic Malay, one of the reasons he never quite established satisfactory contact with the elites in Jawa.

Or maybe Shelford worked entirely through an interpreter. We don't know, but what we do know is that this name as it stands does not seem to fit into a Malay language pattern. But it should.

Malay is different to English in that it places the most important thing first in sentence, statement, or name, and the descriptor follows:- mobil kuning = yellow car.

Sometimes the principal name and the descriptor can be interchangeable:- jati gembol or gembol jati = both combinations mean the same thing:- burl teak.

So, logically our tilang kamaran should be a tilan fish + a descriptor.

Really, none of the suggestions that I, or anybody else have made really fits a standard Malay pattern. Yes, in names a bit of twisting can go on, and everything suggested might fit one way or another, but they're not perfect.

What we need is a word that will describe a fish, when that fish name is also the name of a sword.

Here are two more suggestions:-

kemerahan = from merah :- red

kemarahan = from marah :- anger

both these words, particularly "kemarahan" if spoken by a native speaker would sound like "kamaran" to somebody with very limited Malay. Don't forget that local pronunciations can play havoc with both vowel and consonant placement.

Maybe there are more words that will fit. However, I do most sincerely doubt that the original name recorded is an accurate representation of the name given to Shelford by his informant.

Are we also considering the fact that the sea dayak speak Iban ?

So the Iban word might have been translated into Malay.

Someone with Iban knowledge would probably have a different view on this name.

Appologies in case I am creating more confusion. ;) :)

No, not more confusion, but a timely reminder.

All these groups in Borneo speak dialects of Malay. All of us who have commented have been commenting in terms of Malay, not commenting in terms of the dialect used in the relevant area.

When the question was initially raised dialect was mentioned, and maybe this is where the difficulty is.

Hi
I like to open this post again. I bought a the following piece as a jimpul but I was told by a well known collector that this is an tilang kamerau. First google search gives this post. Maybe interesting. Unlikely with some damages. Bad weather in germany, to bad to make some daylight-pictures

Best Thomas

Hello Thomas!

A really good piece - congrats!

IMHO this sword can well be considered as jimpul (or as an intermediate/link): This hilt style is typical for jimpul and also the blade ticks quite a lot of boxes even if the tip isn't as steep as in most jimpul blades.

I hope more of the Borneo specialists will comment!

Regards,
Kai