Re: Weekly Vocab #1.1.1 (repost #1)

Actually, in Chinese the compound is also "wolf-man": 狼人

2006/9/6, Eric Christopherson <rakko@...>:
> On Sep 4, 2006, at 5:19 PM, Henrik Theiling wrote:
>
> > Hi!
> >
> > Carsten Becker writes:
> >> ...
> >>>>    2. werewolf / lycanthrope of some variety
> >>
> >> ayvengaryo (lit. "wolf-man")
> >> ...
> >
> > Interesting.  Did you have a particular reason to decide to reverse
> > the typical order for compounding?  All the languages in which I know
> > the word 'werewolf' compound it as 'man-wolf'.
>
> There is an English word 'wolfman' (or 'wolf man') also.  I'm not
> sure of its exact semantics or distribution, but it seems to occur
> most commonly in the context of old monster movies (including the one
> called "The Wolf Man").
>
> >
> > I always intuitionally thought 'wolf-man' would be more sensible, so I
> > wonder whether you thought the same.
>
> It's an interesting question -- is a werewolf a (wolf-like) type of
> human, or a (human-like) type of wolf?
>
> >
> > When translating it a few days ago, I still sticked to the order all
> > the other languages I know use.
> >
> > **Henrik
>