User talk:Tmalmjursson:Talk with me

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hi

I just read your message to me on the ihug.co.nz user's page. I had already spotted your reversion in the NZ English article (re tapu), and Limegreen's subsequent contribution. I wrote a note on your user page, then I found your warning, which I think was misplaced, as the "information" I removed was definitely incorrect. Possibly the note I wrote you should have been written here, so here it is; I hope it clears things up. -- Cheers, NC

Hi. I gather you re-inserted the note on tapu (as probably borrowed from Tongan tabu), minutes after I removed it. Very shortly afterwards Limegreen corrected it. There has been some rapid cross-editing here!

Your note in the history says "Useful information removed". In fact, I removed it because it was not useful - it was wrong. I intended to explain my action on the discussion page, but domestic circumstances interrupted. Māori and Tongan are both Polynesian languages, and even though they are remote from each other on the Polynesian family tree, they still share a lot of common inherited features, especially in vocabulary. The word tapu is widely attested, including the form kapu in Hawai'ian, which is very close to Māori. Tapu is a deeply grounded concept in the traditional Māori world view, and not something borrowed from outside. It touches almost every area of life. No one with specialist knowledge in Polynesian languages and culture would have assumed a borrowing here.

Cheers—Neil Copeland