Basic Weapons Swadesh List ?

~Alaung_Hpaya~ · 11th September 2007, 03:37 PM

Quote:

Swadesh list
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Swadesh list is one of several lists of vocabulary with "basic" meanings and developed by Morris Swadesh in the 1940-50s, which is used in lexicostatistics (quantitative language relatedness assessment) and glottochronology (language divergence dating).

I thought it might be fun to find out what the basic terms for basic weapons are in different countries and to speculate whether these might be cognates or loans . I'm especially interested in Asia ( SE , South and East ) .

Burmese list :

Sword / knife / blade - dha
Spear - hlan
Staff / Stick - dhouk
Bow - lay
Arrows - hmya
Shield - daing

Any participation most welcome

josh stout · 13th September 2007, 03:05 AM

The most basic one in my mind is the Chinese doa with all the similar variants from SEA meaning essentially the same thing. I cant think of any examples of a dha, daarb, man(dau) hwando or similar sounding weapons that are double edged. Most are primarily slashing or chopping weapons.

The two edged sword, jian or gim, does not seem to be quite so widespread with examples of the kiem in Vietnam, and I think it is a gum in Korea.

Then of coarse there is the keris/kris ranging from India to the Philippines.
Is this what you are looking for?
Josh

13th September 2007, 03:05 AM	#2
josh stout Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 407	The most basic one in my mind is the Chinese doa with all the similar variants from SEA meaning essentially the same thing. I cant think of any examples of a dha, daarb, man(dau) hwando or similar sounding weapons that are double edged. Most are primarily slashing or chopping weapons. The two edged sword, jian or gim, does not seem to be quite so widespread with examples of the kiem in Vietnam, and I think it is a gum in Korea. Then of coarse there is the keris/kris ranging from India to the Philippines. Is this what you are looking for? Josh