Fwd: RE: Animals - part 2 - sea life

[Simon Foale]

Re parrotfish, in Solomons I'm pretty sure the most commonly used pijin term
for them is "grin fis/pis" (green fish). I also think there are more species of
parrotfishes where green dominates in the overall colour pattern than blue. In
Solomon pijin the Bump-head Parrotfish, Bolbometapon muricatum (which
happens to
be more blue-ish than greenish) is called "Topa".
And on the subject of coloured fish, the Solomon pijin term "Silva fis" or
"Silva pis" (silver fish) is very commonly used to refer to various species of
deep-sea snappers (e.g. Etelis spp), as many of these species don't have proper
language names, having been commonly fished only since the advent of commercial
and artisanal fishing. I have to say I always found this name a bit wierd since
almost all of these species are brilliant red. 
Simon Foale


>
> From: "Ross Clark (FOA LING)" <r.clark at auckland.ac.nz>
> To: Multiple recipients of list <MIHALIC at anu.edu.au>
> Subject: RE: Animals - part 2 - sea life
> Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 15:53:14 +1300
> X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)
> Sender: owner-MIHALIC at anu.edu.au
>
>  
>>
>> blupela pis: 1. parrotfish (family Scaridae) (Allen & Swainston, 1992:
>> 88-91) 2. Any blue-colored fish
>> Question: Most, but not all parrotfishes are blue!  Are the non-blue
>> parrotfishes still called blupela pis?
>>
>> [Ross Clark (FOA LING)] Bislama "blufis" and various vernacular names in
>> Vanuatu appear to refer to this family of fishes generically by this colour
>> word -- of course whether this is true in Tok Pisin is an empirical question
>> for local research. 
>>  
>> pislama (from the Portuguese, "bicho do mar", literally "sea worm"): 1.
>> trepang, sea slug, bêche-de-mer (Holothuria spp.)  2. a sluggard (Tok Piksa)
>> (Mühlhäusler, 1979: 337)
>> [Ross Clark (FOA LING)] 
>> Not really directly from Portuguese, but via English "beach-la-mar".  
>





Simon Foale
112 Faraday St
Carlton VIC 3053 
Australia
Ph/Fax: + 61 3 9347 1974
Email: simonjf at bigpond.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/private/mihalic/attachments/20011024/d8fe8d65/attachment.htm