ku'uytEn 'horse'

[Mike Cleven]

janilta wrote:
>
> Hello, Aron,
>
> The point is not really to confuse moose with horse, I think. Everyone
> can make the difference. But the linguistic point is what do you can
> call a reality you never saw before, and in this very case, what do you
> call an animal never encountered before.
> The easiest way is to take the name given to these animals by the people
> on the spot (or from those bringing it). But European languages in
> America have numerous examples of names of European animals given to new
> realities (somethimes adding 'Indian' or 'American' to make a
> distinction).
> On the other hand, Native nations being confronted to a new beast called
> 'horse' could whether create a new word, or take the imported
> denomination (we saw many examples of 'caballo' borrowings) or even
> extend the meaning of an existing word : eg Comanche 'tihiya' (deer)
> being used for 'horse' (the Comanche did not confuse 'deer' with
> 'horse', they only had to find a denomination) I mentioned before.

Note that "moose" was adopted by European (anglo) colonists despite the
fact that there are also moose in Europe (only Scandinavia and, of
course, Russia).  It's true that they were long extinct (or rather,
their cousin the Irish Elk was long extinct) and that colonist-era
British had never seen or heard of one; so they adopted the native
term.........