Taboo is a Tongan word. Type Tongan Language in your search engine for
interesting results.

Nearest English probably "proscribe."

GB

----- Original Message -----
From: "Deep Stream" <DeepStream@...>
To: <norse_course@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, July 01, 2002 10:36 AM
Subject: Re: [norse_course] Bear taboo


> My utterly unsubstantiated ramblings:
>
> Not only the original word for 'bear' (related to
> Latin 'Ursus') but also for 'wolf' (related to
> Latin 'Lupus') were lost in Germanic apparently
> to taboo-ifying (there's a fancy word for that
> I've forgotten).
>
> The idea is that people were so anxious about
> encountering bears or wolves they avoided 'saying
> the name of the beast lest he come' and used
> monikers (bear being 'the brown one' and wolves
> being 'the woofers' - ie, people imitated their
> sound).
>
> Something funny I noticed: In German *almost* no
> nouns have declensive endings or alterations, but
> the word 'bear' does. My idea is that this is
> because the word bear developed for an adjective
> ('brown'). For this reason it still has some
> slight adjective-like declension. That's not true
> for the word wolf; however, "woof" is not
> necessarilly a adjective.
>
> In German *nouns* do not carry declensive changes
> like in Norse. In Norse, a noun can change alot
> depending on whether its in the nominative or
> accusative case. In German, the noun v v rarely
> changes at all in different cases, but any
> articles and adjectives related to it do change
> in generally the same way as they do for Norse.
>
> Look at the comparison in Germany:
>
> Hund (dog) is normal:
> Der braune Hund sieht mich (the brown dog sees
> me)
> Ich sehe deN brauneN Hund (I see the brown dog)
> >>The article and adjective 'the' and 'brown'
> both change in the accusative case.
>
> Baer is funny:
> Der braune Baer sieht mich (the brown bear sees
> me)
> Ich sehen deN brauneN BaereN (i see the brown
> bear)
> >>Not only the article and adjective but also the
> *noun itself* changes in the accusative case.
>
> The word 'bear' modifies in the accusative (and
> incidentally in all cases other than nominative)
> just like it would if it were a weakly-declined
> adjective instead of a noun. The modification is
> not like adjectives otherwise (ie no nominative
> or strong declination modification), but it seems
> funny that some random word like 'bear' should
> have adjective-like characteristics at all.
>
> There are other words in Germany that modify like
> this ('Customer'), but I dont' see that they are
> necessarilly because the root is an adjective.
>
> - DS
>
> --- Haukur Thorgeirsson
> <haukurth@...> wrote:
> > > > The general word is 'björn';
> > > > thought to be derived from the same stem as
> > 'brown'
> > > > with the original IE-stem (lat. ursus)
> > being lost
> > > > due to a taboo.
> > >
> > > I'm subscribed to the digest, so this may
> > have been
> > > asked and answered, but I'm curious about the
> > taboo
> > > you mentioned. Can you describe more about
> > this
> > > or point me to some writings?
> >
> > Not really :-) My only source for this is
> > Íslensk
> > orðsifjabók by Ásgeir Magnússon. I didn't have
> > it
> > at hand when I wrote that and I don't have it
> > now
> > but I think he said "e.t.v. vegna bannhelgi;
> > perhaps
> > due to a taboo" (so my statement above is a
> > notch
> > too definite).
> >
> > I doubt anything is known for sure.
> >
> > Kveðja,
> > Haukur
> >
>
>
> =====
> Kindest Regards,
> - DeepStream
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