"phute'okicu" and other new animals

["Alfred W. Tüting"]

(Clive)

 > BTW, Bruce, my Maltese friends tell me that , in their enchanting  
tongue also, ħuta (f.sg.)  [Two plurals (Determinate) ħutiet ;
 > (Collective) ħut] is the usual word for fish.

 > Their word for whale is baliena. Not sure of plural there, prob.  
balienat, or balieniet.



Clive, some 20 years back when in Għawdex (Gozo), I had been grappling  
with this very interesting language Malti for a couple of
years; Maltese being the only "Arabic" I ever ventured to deal with, I  
was eager then to even filter out some news from the local newspapers.
(I still own some yellowed copies, BTW.)
Consulting my old sources (Kaptan Pawlu Buġeja's "Kelmet il-Malti -  
Dizzjunarju Malti-Ingliż Ingliż-Malti and a grammar book by Joseph
Aquilina) I wasn't able to get a definite answer to your "quite  
simple" question ;-) Obviously the manifold plural forms in Maltese are
so obvious for native speakers - and students of English - that  
teacher Buġeja didn't regard them as worth mentioning.

So I've to dare a guess: the word for "whale" might be treated as a  
loan word (not being of Arabic descent rather than adopted from  
Sicilian or
Italian la balena), and it - also - seems to be fem.. So I'd suggest  
baliena [IPA baliə:na] - balieni [IPA baliə:ni]. Having checked all  
the rules
regarding "plural by suffixes" (a "broken plural" doesn't seem to be  
appropriate), this seems to be the most probable result - but who  
knows? :(
My doubts regarding your ?balienat or **balieniet - the stress  
would've to move to the last syllable -> ?baliniet - derive from  
baliena 1) NOT being
of Arabic origin, 2) maybe not being adapted to the semitic word- 
pattern of Maltese. Here (2) I might be wrong though. What do you mean?

Kind regards (and apology for being far off-topic)

Alfred

_________________________________

Ṫaigmuakiṫo (AWT)

Laḱota iyapi wóuŋspeḱiye
http://www.fa-kuan.de/LAKSTRUCT.HTML





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