Ma'ya language

Ma'ya is an Austronesian language spoken in West Papua by 6,000 people. It is spoken in coastal villages on the islands Misool, Salawati, and Waigeo in the Raja Ampat islands. It is spoken on the boundary between Austronesian and Papuan languages. Both its tone and stress are lexically distinctive. That means both the stress and the pitch of a word may affect meaning. The stress and tone are quite independent from one another, in contrast to their occurrence in Swedish and Serbo-Croatian. It has three tonemes (high, rising and falling). Out of over a thousand Austronesian languages, there are only a dozen with lexical tone; in this case it appears to be a remnant of shift from Papuan languages. Ma'ya has five dialects, three on the island Waigeo (Laganyan, Wauyai, and Kawe), one on Salawati, and extinct or nearly extinct Batanta. The prestige dialect is the one on Salawati. The Waigeo dialects have /s/ and /ʃ/, where the varieties spoken on Salawati and Misool have /t/ and /c/ respectively. Batanta, now extinct, was evidently unintelligible with its neighbours.

Maya (illusion)

Maya (Sanskrit: māyā) literally "illusion", "magic", has multiple meanings in Indian philosophies depending on the context. In ancient Vedic literature, Māyā literally implies extraordinary power and wisdom. In later Vedic texts and modern literature dedicated to Indian traditions, Māyā connotes a "magic show, an illusion where things appear to be present but are not what they seem". Māyā is also a spiritual concept connoting "that which exists, but is constantly changing and thus is spiritually unreal", and the "power or the principle that conceals the true character of spiritual reality".

In Buddhism, Maya is the name of Gautama Buddha's mother. In Hinduism, Maya is also an epithet for goddess, and the name of a manifestation of Lakshmi, the goddess of "wealth, prosperity and love". Maya is also a name for girls.

Etymology

Māyā (Sanskrit: माया) is a word with unclear etymology, probably comes from the root "√ma", or "mā" which means "to measure". Alternatively, the root of the word may be from "man-" or "to think", implying the role of imagination in the creation of the world. In early Vedic usage, the term implies, states Mahony, "the wondrous and mysterious and wondrous power to turn an idea into a physical reality".

Ma Ya

Ma Ya is Habib Koité & Bamada's second studio album.

Track listing

References