ACD - Austronesian Comparative Dictionary Online

*asi₃ fermented rice

PWMP asi₃ fermented rice ⇫ ¶

WMP
Jarai	asey	cooked rice
Rhade	êsei	cooked rice
Kadazan Dusun	asiz-an	the one for whom one makes rice beer
Bisaya	peŋ-asi	rice wine
Bisaya (Limbang)	peŋ-asi	rice wine
Iban	asiʔ	cooked rice

PWMP maŋ-asi make rice wine (?) ⇫ ¶

WMP
Itbayaten	maŋ-asi	to separate aged wine from yeast
Kadazan Dusun	maŋ-asi	to make rice beer

PWMP in-asi cooked rice ⇫ ¶

WMP
Kadazan Dusun	n-asi	native beer made from rice
Karo Batak	pajak nasi	time to eat
Malay	nasi	rice in two senses: (i) as cooked in some particular way; and (ii) as the staple food of the Malays
Ma'anyan	nahiʔ	cooked rice
Madurese	naseʔ	cooked rice
Old Javanese	nasi	cooked rice
Balinese	nasi	steamed cooked rice
Sasak	nasiʔ	cooked rice

Reconstructions

PWMP	asi₃	fermented rice
PWMP	maŋ-asi	make rice wine (?)
PWMP	in-asi	cooked rice

Note

Since the great majority of witnesses reflect *asiʔ in the meaning ‘cooked rice’, it might be questioned why this meaning is not also associated with the ancestral form. However, reflexes of PAn *Semay ‘cooked rice’ persisted in some of the languages cited here (or their close relatives). It is tempting to dismiss this cognate set as a product of borrowing from Malay, but under such a hypothesis at least three observations remain unexplained: 1) the absence of the initial nasal in Kadazan Dusun, Bisaya (Limbang), Iban , and the Chamic languages, 2) the presence of the final glottal stop in Iban and Sasak, and 3) the meanings of the reflexes in Kadazan Dusun and Bisaya (Limbang). It is possible that this form began as an innovation in northern Borneo which spread to Malay while the latter still occupied the Malayic homeland of southwest Borneo. If so it evidently underwent a semantic change in the process of borrowing, and was then borrowed from Brunei Malay into Kapampangan (cf. Kapampangan nasiʔ ‘cooked (boiled) rice’).