Tonkawa horses

Wallace Chafe chafe at linguistics.ucsb.edu
Wed Apr 21 16:33:58 UTC 2004


Caddo has two words for 'horse', which people often cite to show that "we
don't all talk alike": kawa:yuh and di:tamah (with falling pitch on the
di:). The di:- part in the latter means 'dog', but I've never been able to
figure out the -tamah. I mention this because the Caddos were neighbors of
the Tonkawas, with some linguistic contact, and it's quite possible the
Tonkawas also had an alternative word derived from caballo, which Hoijer
just didn't happen to record.
--Wally

> A propos of horses, dogs etc.:  Tonkawa had a word for horse that meant
> 'dog for carrying things'; it had also had one which meant something to
> do with burdens, which had been used in Gatschet's day -Hoijer collected
> this word but not n a text (maybe it had been subject to taboo at some
> time).  Given that Spanish was the major source of loans into Tonkawa,
> it's a little odd that it never took over a form of caballo/cahuayo.



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