ASB puza

[David Costa]

One thing that I find interesting about all these European 'cat' words being
borrowed into Native languages is that they're ALL from p-initial forms,
like 'puss' or 'poes'. Oddly, NO language that's been mentioned here so far
borrowed plain old English 'cat', unless that's what's behind Ojibwe
/gaazhagens/ 'cat'.


> [RLR: ]  I don't have a lot to add to the voluminous correspondence on ASB
> 'cat' except to mention that the way you *call* your cat in a whole string of
> European colonial (and other) languages is "pis, pis, pis" or "pus, pus, pus".
> This may or may not have anything to do with the ASB word, but I'm inclined to
> agree with David that English is the probable source.