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Re: OT: Another Portuguese (?) question

From:João Ricardo de Mendonça <somnicorvus@...>
Date:Sunday, November 5, 2006, 3:22
I don't know the word "cutão". Looking in my roommate's small dictionary, I
found "cotão", which is those little balls of dust and hair that gather in
the corner of your room. "Cutão" might be a variant of it, because pretonic
/o/ is realized as [u] in many dialects.

There is also the word "cutelo", which is a kind of knife. They may be
related in some way.

(I'm using Gmail: please change the "To" address to
conlang@listserv.brown.edu)

João Ricardo


On 04/11/06, Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> wrote:
> > Do any of our Port. speakers know whether a word like "cutão" or similar > exists, or used to exist-- it would pertain to knives/blades. It is not in > my little dictionary, but I think I've seen it elsewhere. Or perhaps old > Spanish? > > Alternatively, do any of our Japanese scholars know the origin of _katana_ > "sword" (perhaps the Samurais' sword in particular, I'm not sure)? > > In addition to the Jap. word, I find "katana ~k@tana" = knife in old > sources > for various languages of eastern Indonesia/Ambonese area; since borrowing > from Jap. or vice-versa is not a real possibility, only Port. (less likely > Span.) remains as the only reasonable source in both languages. > > Thanks in advance :-) > Roger >