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Palagi (pronounced ''paalangi'' - ''singular'') or papaalagi (''plural'') is a term in Samoan culture of uncertain meaning, sometimes used to describe foreigners or anything that does not belong to Samoan culture. Tent and Geraghty (2001) comment that the origin of the Western Polynesian ''Papāalagi~Pālagi'' and the Fijian ''Vāvālagi~Pāpālagi'' remains a matter of speculation.〔Tent, Jan and Paul Geraghty, Paul, 2001, "Exploding sky or exploded myth? The origin of Papalagi", ''Journal of the Polynesian Society'', 110, No. 2: 171-214.〕 ''Papāalagi~Pālagi'' is a word in the Samoan language describing non-Samoans especially European westerners or Caucasians. In Samoa the term is used to describe foreigners or anything that does not belong to Samoa or Samoan culture. The word is both a noun e.g. ''a Palagi'' (European person) or an adjective e.g. ''Palagi'' house (non-traditional Samoan house). The word is a cognate in other Polynesian languages and has gained widespread use throughout much of western Polynesia, including in Tokelau, Tuvalu, 'Uvea and Futuna. Written ''Pālagi'' or ''Papālagi'' in Samoan, and ''Papālangi'' or ''Pālangi'' in Tongan,〔Tcherkezoff, Serge, 1999. "Who said the 17th-18th centuries paplagi/'Europeans' were 'sky-bursters'? A Eurocentric projection onto Polynesia", ''Journal of the Polynesian Society'', 108, 4: 417-425.〕 the term ''Pālagi'' is also used in Niuean. ==Use, meaning and origin of term== The etymology of the term ''Palagi'' is disputed. An explanation that emerged in the 19th century is that word is derived from the Polynesian rootwords "pa" (meaning: gates) and "lagi" (meaning: sky or heaven), hence the standard translation "gates of heaven"〔Stair, John B., n.d. (1897 ). ''Old Samoa or Flotsam and Jetsam from the Pacific Ocean'', Oxford: The Religious Tract Society.〕 It has been suggested that the compound word comes from the Polynesian's reaction to seeing for the first time, European missionaries enter the country. Their skin being a different color made them think they were men sent from the gates of heaven.〔Turner, George, 1884. ''Samoa: A Hundred Years Ago and Long Before'', London: Macmillan.〕 Tcherkézoff (1999) argues that such an interpretation is a European projection to explain Polynesian cosmology.〔 The explanation of Niuean word "Palagi", is that "pa" means bang such as that of a gun and "lagi" means sky, literally means bangs into the sky. In "Papa-lagi" "papa" means more than one bang or many bangs, and "lagi" means sky. In the olden days, Europeans who landed on Niue carried guns and often fired the guns into the sky, when they landed on the reef, to scare away potential trouble-making natives. Jan Tent, a Macquarie University linguist, and Dr. Paul Geraghty, director of the Institute of Fijian Language and Culture in Suva, suggest that the word may have its origins in the travels of the Polynesians themselves. They believe that the Polynesian islanders may have encountered Malay travellers prior to contact with Europeans, and adopted the Malay word ''barang'' (meaning: imported cloth). These researchers also suggest another possible etymology - the Malay word for European, as used in the 17th and 18th centuries, was ''faranggi''. However, they discount this possibility as the word ''palangi'' seems to have originally referred to cloth; only later was the word transferred to the people.〔 A possible alternative etymology for ''palangi'' is that is it derived from the Perso-Arabic term farangi, meaning "an outsider". The extent to which Arab traders explored the Pacific Islands, or that Pacific Island communities had contact with Muslim trades remains uncertain but Arab and Persian Muslim colonies were established in Indonesia and Malaysia starting around the 10th century AD. According to an unpublished paper by Prof. Bivar of the School of Oriental and African Studies, there is some textual evidence from Arab and Persian travelogues (cf. The Journeys of Sinbad in the ''One Thousand and One Nights'') for contact between Muslim traders and Pacific islands prior to European discoveries and landfalls. The word comes from the Fijian language which uses vavalangi to refer to the white men who "walked from under the sky". In Polynesian language the v is replaced with the letter p. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Palagi」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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