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