Malagasy is the language of Madagascar. I have known this for years even though I only know one word in the language which I learned from a web search.
We’ve been to Brittany in France quite often recently. I guess most people know that they have their own language there - Breton (brezhoneg). A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across the fact that the Bretons actually have two languages. The official languages of Brittany are French, Breton and Gallo. I’m slightly perplexed as to how I didn’t previously know this.
I have a Breizhman T-shirt (Breizh = Breton in Breton), which I wouldn’t wear in other parts of France; but it never occurred to me that there were parts of Brittany where it might not be appreciated.
Sorry, but I must nitpick: the correct term is amnesia eu: “I had forgotten this before”, your version would be something like “I have seen this forgotten before”. Vu is from voire: to see. Eu is from avoir, to have, both nicely irregular. It is pronounced something like euwgh!
Your nitpick is, however, faulty on a couple of points. In the first place, “amnesia” is not a French word (it is spelled a little differently and probably sounds like something involving having a mouthful of marbles – my ear’s impression of spoken French). But, more importantly, if you look more carefully at what I wrote, the word is “amnesja”, which is most definitely not the French word and also not the English word but clearly a deliberate error meant to evoke the sense of the source expression, rather than an attempt at actual French. Most modern English speakers will recognise it for what it is.
I discovered this important human behavior pattern and submitted it to the compilers of the DSM. They responded,
“We’re sorry, but this is not a new discovery. We cannot credit it to you.”
“Well, who discovered it?” I asked.
“Well, it was, um, it was, wait, I have it right here. No that’s not it. I know we have a citation, it is just not handy right now. Let me get back to you.”
So I waited, and then something came up that I had to deal with. Then something else, and another thing, and another, and before I knew it almost three decades had drifted past. When it finally occurred to me to check back with them, I received an e-mail response that consisted of some emojis and textspeak acronyms (I suspect TWYT must stand for “that’s what you think”?), concluding with “OK, Boomer”. And these are the people with whom we entrust our mental health.
A substantial part of the ethnic heritage of central Madagascar comes from Borneo.
Which means are some point in history they went through the entire Indonesian archipelago and across or around the Indian Ocean. I’ve yet to find out how, when or why!
Malagasy is indeed an Austronesian language, like Malay, Indonesian, Javanese, Filipino, Hawaiian, Tahitian and Maori to name just the most familiar ones. 90% of its vocabulary is Austronesian, with the remaining 10% coming from Sanskrit, Bantu languages from Africa, Arabic, and more recently, English and French.
I’m well aware of that, but the steps from Taiwan - Philippines - micronesia - and further on are relatively short and understandable. But what makes one group at the eastern end of Indonesia up sticks and move 7,600km over open ocean, or much further around the coasts past numerous other islands and places, to an island that you’d wonder if they even knew existed?
It seems that the Barito ancestors of the Malagasy people were used as slaves on Malay and Javanese merchant fleets. This explains both the close genetic link of Malagasy with the Barito languages, and its many loanwords from Malay and Javanese, which belong to the same family but different subgroups.
However, this only pushes the question further back. How did the Malay and Javanese “know” of Madagascar ? My hunch is, they didn’t. They were very accomplished sailors and, from what I’ve read, already had trade connections with India. I guess they sailed along the eastern coast of Africa from there and at one point stumbled upon Madagascar.
By the way, the same question applies to the other side of the Austronesian realm. The steps you’ve mentioned, Taiwan => the Philippines => Indonesia => Micronesia, seem reasonable enough. But how did they get to Hawaii, New Zealand, and even more astonishingly Rapa Nui, one of the most isolated places on Earth ?
And there’s also the open questions of probable contacts with South America, and the doubtful but intriguing possibility of an Austronesian substratum in Japanese.
Maybe it’s simply that all the other places they passed through - India, Sri Lanka, Arabia, continental Africa - were already densely populated, so either they didn’t settle there or settlers were absorbed into the local population without a trace. Madagascar, on the other hand, was uninhabited, so they managed to establish a real presence.
In 1920, you could get a one year’s subscription to the Brooklyn “Daily Eagle” newspaper for $1.50. That’s less than half a cent an issue, and i assume it was home delivery. (News stand price was 3 cents).
Newspapers (and magazines) are funded by advertising, not subscriptions. Advertisers get charged by the number of potential readers who could see their ads. The higher the circulation the higher the rates.
Newspapers (and magazines) do everything except give themselves away to drive circulation. If you subscribe to one magazine today you’ll get mailings from dozens of others offering subscriptions for pennies instead of dollars just to be able to claim more readers and scrape in a few extra bucks for whatever advertisers are willing to use a dying medium. Of course, they now use automatic renewal at the full rate to make money out of the inattentive.
Circulation wars go back to the earliest penny papers in the mid-19th century. The number of ways they invented to lure readers are impressively ingenious. Comic strips were their best gimmick. They shouldn’t exist at all in a newspaper but they brought in more readers than any other part of the paper.
This has not been my experience. I get junk mail from the local politicians and car dealerships, but not for magazine subscriptions, despite my existing paper magazine subscription.