a1179: RE: a1041: Bois Caiman, Boukman, and Intellectual Honesty (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Karen Davis <kdavis@marygrove.edu>

Once again, Manbo Racine makes clear sense.
As an anthropologist with some knowledge of langauge & linguistics--I can
echo her comments. Stretching to "find" a mysterious link (such as an Arabic
meaning for Bois Caiman) through one or a few vocabulary items is not good
linguistics. Our French teacher refers to these meaningless phonetic
similarities as "false friends."  There are not hundreds but thousands of
human languages, yet even using tonality our phonetics are limited in making
discernible phonemic distinctions. So, of course, there are THOUSANDS of
"false friends" between languages. Does anyone remember giggling in high
school Latin classes when we gave the "soft" (R.C.) pronunciation of "scit"?
And isn't it mysterious that "tet" is an Asian holiday?

Karen F. Davis, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Head of Humanities Department
Marygrove College
Detroit, Michigan 48221 USA
Telephone: 313-927-1352
email: kdavis@marygrove.edu