Egyptian 'cat' ?

[Patrick C. Ryan]

Dear Lloyd and Joat and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <ECOLING at aol.com>
Sent: Friday, January 14, 2000 3:44 PM

> Joat Simeon writes:

>> Ancient Egyptian for "cat" was "miw"

> actually, given the lack of voweling
> and some difficulties in interpreting the "i" and "y"
> writings, could it have been "mi(ao)w" or "mi(u)w" or ??
> For the last, compare English "mew" [myuw], the verb.

Though Egyptologists would not agree, I believe any early Egyptian
alphabetic spelling represents Ca combinations: so, [mjw] = *mayawa. This is
roughly analogous with the situation we might expect if we had a very early
IE MYW (*meyewe).

If stress-accent is considered, one can easily imagine *mayawa taking many
forms, e.g. *maya'u.

Pat

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