Re: OT: Another Portuguese (?) question

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
>