FW: [SEELANGS] pronun. of

[Jules Levin]

At 08:37 AM 3/3/2008, you wrote:
>Here is my two yen:
>There was a good print artist of Finnish origin, 
>Clifton Karhu. He died last year in Japan where 
>he spent most of his life. So in some cases this 
>word was evidently not a taboo.
>In Japanese, btw, the corresponding word is 
>'kuma' 熊 - which is possibly easier to utter than the Russian one.

I'm not a Finnicist, but the finnish word looks 
suspiciously like an ancient borrowing from 
Indo-European, hence possibly also a taboo.
Cf.  (cited here previously by Hugh Olmsted) 
Hittite 'hartagas', Sanskrit 'rksa' , reconstructed something like *h(2)rtKo-s
So what goes around comes around...
Jules Levin

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