I saw this comic on xkcd last week (link):
(Or a cabbage, for that matter. The goat makes sense. Goats are fine.)
Too true.
Anyway, I showed this to an Assamese friend of mine, who told me that the Assamese version contained a tiger, not a wolf. But then again, he added, a 'wolf' in Assamese is literally a 'dog-tailed tiger' (with a little sound change involved).
So here we have the word for 'wolf' in Assamese: কুকুৰনেচীয়া বাঘ kukurnesiyaa bagh - it also could be transliterated as kukurnechiyaa, but the transliterated 'ch' is pronounced like [s] in Assamese.
We can clearly see the words কুকুৰ kukur 'dog' and বঘ bagh 'tiger'. We can also kinda see the word for 'tail', which in Assamese is নেজ nez - it could also be transliterated as nej, but in Assamese, what is transliterated as 'j' can also be pronounced as [z].
At this point you may be wondering how or why কুকুৰনেচীয়া kukurnesiyaa and নেজ nez are related. I myself am not sure what the -iya does here and am assuming that it's some sort of attributive marker. However, most linguists will quickly see the connection between the [s] in kukurnesiyaa and the [z] nez - the difference between the two sounds is just a matter of whether your vocal folds are vibrating or not (the former being a 'voiceless' sound, and the latter a 'voiced' one with your vocal folds vibrating).
And there you have it, wolves are literally 'dog-tailed tigers' in Assamese.
One might wonder then if Assamese বঘ bagh then refers to any 'big scary animal that might eat you' with the prototypical example being 'a big orange cat with black stripes'. Of course, the danger for language learners like myself is to interpret these compounds too literally. I mean, most English speakers wouldn't perceive the food item 'hot dog' as a sizzling canine - the meat is never dog, and they're still hot dogs even when they get cold!
So with that in mind, how can it be fair for me to assume Assamese speakers perceive wolves as big striped cats with dog tails, amusing as it may be!
(Or a cabbage, for that matter. The goat makes sense. Goats are fine.)
Too true.
Anyway, I showed this to an Assamese friend of mine, who told me that the Assamese version contained a tiger, not a wolf. But then again, he added, a 'wolf' in Assamese is literally a 'dog-tailed tiger' (with a little sound change involved).
So here we have the word for 'wolf' in Assamese: কুকুৰনেচীয়া বাঘ kukurnesiyaa bagh - it also could be transliterated as kukurnechiyaa, but the transliterated 'ch' is pronounced like [s] in Assamese.
We can clearly see the words কুকুৰ kukur 'dog' and বঘ bagh 'tiger'. We can also kinda see the word for 'tail', which in Assamese is নেজ nez - it could also be transliterated as nej, but in Assamese, what is transliterated as 'j' can also be pronounced as [z].
At this point you may be wondering how or why কুকুৰনেচীয়া kukurnesiyaa and নেজ nez are related. I myself am not sure what the -iya does here and am assuming that it's some sort of attributive marker. However, most linguists will quickly see the connection between the [s] in kukurnesiyaa and the [z] nez - the difference between the two sounds is just a matter of whether your vocal folds are vibrating or not (the former being a 'voiceless' sound, and the latter a 'voiced' one with your vocal folds vibrating).
And there you have it, wolves are literally 'dog-tailed tigers' in Assamese.
One might wonder then if Assamese বঘ bagh then refers to any 'big scary animal that might eat you' with the prototypical example being 'a big orange cat with black stripes'. Of course, the danger for language learners like myself is to interpret these compounds too literally. I mean, most English speakers wouldn't perceive the food item 'hot dog' as a sizzling canine - the meat is never dog, and they're still hot dogs even when they get cold!
So with that in mind, how can it be fair for me to assume Assamese speakers perceive wolves as big striped cats with dog tails, amusing as it may be!
