Wednesday Lite : The Himalayas Are Actually Gunung Melayu - For Tamil Readers, But Others Can Also Read

 When I was a boy my father told me an interesting story or "joke" about learning the Tamil language. 

The story was about a Mat Salleh who was in Tamil Nadu in India who wanted to learn how to write Tamil. So he went to a well known "Iyer" who taught Tamil. The Iyer told the Mat Salleh that he would first teach the Mat Salleh how to speak simple Tamil, and thereafter also how to write the language. 

But the Mat Salleh refused. He said he did not have time to learn how to speak Tamil first and he insisted he only wanted to learn the alphabet. He will pick up the language later. (This is just a story ok. Chill.)

So the "Iyer" taught him to write the Tamil alphabet (which is completely phonetic or based on sound, and extremely easy to learn).  Soon the Mat Salleh was able to string up all the phonetics of the Tamil alphabet (a, aa, e, ee, u, uu, etc). 

Then the teacher gave him a simple test. The teacher asked the Mat Salleh to read aloud three Tamil words written together : sukke (dried ginger), milaghu (pepper) and kadukkai (buah kaduka??) 

The Mat Salleh read it aloud as follows : sukkemi,  laghukadu and kai - thus creating three unheard of words in the Tamil language.  

Perhaps this story sounds better in Tamil but the message is simply that often there are  proven, established and easy ways of doing things, even things which are new and unknown to you. There is no need to reinvent the wheel or 'ikut acuan kita sendiri' especially for things about which you do not know  anything.  

A friend of mine who is a professor at a local IPTA (government university) sent me the following video. It is a short video :

The speaker says that the Himalayas were inhabited by Malays for a while hence the name 'Himalaya'.

"Mereka (Malays) diam sekejap di Gunung Himalaya.. Sampai sekarang Gunung Himalaya bernama Gunung Melayu. "Hi"  itu gunung, "Malaya" itu Melayu. Kekal sampai hari ini."

From the video the speaker is a 'Profesor Madya' at a local university.  In the Tamil language the word "madya" has another meaning. You can ask the nearest 'Iyer' what it means. 

Anyway here is the etymology of the Sanskrit word Hima - Alayah or Himalaya.

Etymology : Himalaya, from Sanskrit himalayah, literally "abode of snow," from hima "snow" + alayah "abode".

Plenty of snow

Untuk fahaman profesor madya :

Etimologi ialah cabang ilmu linguistik yang berlajar berdasarkan asal-usul suatu perkataan. Contohnya perkataan etimologi sebenarnya diambil daripada bahasa Inggeris etymology yang berasal daripada bahasa Yunani; étymos (erti sebenarnya ialah sepatah perkataan) dan lògos (pengetahuan). Ringkasnya, perkataan etimologi itu sendiri datang daripada bahasa Yunani ήτυμος (étymos, erti kata) dan λόγος (lógos, pengetahuan).

Maybe the professor should also check the etymology of "Malawi", which is a country in Africa. 

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.