Wednesday, 19 January 2011

Eating out

I was reading Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel again. I got as far as his chapter on the beginnings of agriculture. It interested me that I had words for one of the first baskets of agriculture: padí, which is rice; and wimbí, which is millet. I have no idea how millet is used in food production so that is something that I will have to investigate.

I also had words for using for one of the secondary food cultures: gandon, which is wheat; and mina, which is oatmeal.

This would suggest that crop farming was introduced to the eclectic language speakers from a Chinese style agriculture which was later supplimented by developing European crops. What a curious fusion.

I haven't listed enough animal words to see if their animal culture is as equally diverse.

Interestingly enough the crop words listed above are taken from Indonesian, Swahili and Gaelic.

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