THE BORORO LANGUAGE 
closely resembles the Malay word. Moreover, the word 
ahri in the Bororo language indicated the moon —a most 
remarkable coincidence. It became slightly distorted into 
zahir in the Apiacar language. 
Water, which is poba in Bororo and ilJia in Apiacar, 
was curiously enough ilhaig in the Bagobo language 
(Mindanao Island), po-heh or bo-heh in the Bajao lan¬ 
guage (Mindanao Island), ayer in Malay, and uhayeg 
in Tiruray (west coast of Mindanao Island, Philippine 
Archipelago). 
Father was bap a in Malay, and pao in Bororo. 
Many were the words which bore a slight resemblance, 
as if they had been derived from the same root, hang an, 
arm, in Malay, was anhan-na or akkan-na. Ear, in the 
Ilocano language (Philippine Archipelago) was cabayag; 
aviyag in Bororo. Hair in Ilocano, bo6k, in Manguianes 
bohoc, and in Sulu (Sulu Archipelago) buhuc; in Bororo 
it was akkao, which might easily be a corruption of the 
two former words. 
I was greatly interested, even surprised, to find that 
although those Indians lived thousands of miles on every 
side from the sea, and had never seen it, yet they talked 
of the pobbo mae re u — the immense water: (pobbo, 
water; mae , great; re, the; u, an expression of magnifi¬ 
cation such as our oh ). 
It was also interesting to note that they had specific 
words for water of streams, words which we do not possess 
in the English language, complete as our language is, such 
as down-stream, and up or against-stream — like the 
French en aval and en amont. The Bororo used tche 
begki, down-stream, and tcheo bugkii, up-stream. 
The Bororo language was rudimentary in a way, 
yet most complete and extremely laconic, with innumer¬ 
able contractions. The construction of sentences and the 
position of the verb were not unlike those of Latin 
languages. 
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