Re: Spanish tunco

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:

>
> Here's a mystery word (or words). The only indigenous language in this whole
> area was Nahuatl/Nawat and the word doesn't look like it from that pair of
> closely related languages. I couldn't find anything else in the DRAE but I
> wonder if there is an Ibero-Romance word like *toncar/*tuncar "to cut, (vel
> sim)" that survives in Portuguese, Galician, etc. Words tend to flow from Mexico
> to Central America and Mexican Spanish was influence by Portuguese and Galician.
>
>
> tunco1.
> 1. m. El Salv., Hond. y Méx. cerdo (‖ mamífero artiodáctilo).
> ________________________________
>
>
> tunco2, ca.
> 1. adj. El Salv., Guat., Hond., Méx. y Nic. Mutilado de algún miembro. Hombre
> tunco. Yegua tunca.
> 2. adj. El Salv. corto (‖ que no tiene la extensión que le corresponde). Ese
> vestido te queda tunco.
>

I would look first at the possibility that Nahuatl borrowed <tronco> 'mutilated' from Spanish, reshaped it into *tonco (with wide-range /o/ having [o] and [u] as allophones), and loaned it back to the regional Spanish as <tunco>. To my knowledge this is consistent with Nahuatl phonology.

DGK