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.
Wednesday, 19 January 2011
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