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Originally Posted by Jens Nordlunde
Fernando, your observation is very interesting - and logic as well.
I too think that many names could be local, or spelled the way the Europeans heard it.
Europeans from different countries would likely spell the same weapon in different ways, which may be part of some of our problem.
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That is a good point Jens, Europeans would transliterate the words phonetically, and miss the salient tones and diacritics pertinent.Depending on what language these individuals spoke, their own grammar rules would apply adding that variation to the transliteration.
Compound confusion!
Bob, you are not alone in being confused, as clearly seen in our attempts at clarifying these linguistic dilemmas. As Ibrahiim has well illustrated, many languages in additional to alphabet differences often have radically varied grammatical protocols and pronunciation conventions.
Actually, it is not as much any particular educational deficiency in native groups improperly describing things, including weapons, as it is the human propensity to seek brevity or colloquial words in common parlance.
In casual conversation or communication the use of slang, nicknames or catchy names often take the place of formal.
We could carry this ad hoc course in linguistics as applied to ethnographica ad infinitum in analogies and analysis of grammatical peculiarities. However, the entire purpose of the paper on the karud in the O.P. was to reveal further evidence on the etymology of the term for this dagger form.
It is well understood that this is far from a singular case of transliterated or transposed terms applied to a weapon form, and not necessarily done in the proper sense, or misapplied entirely.
These cases seem simply a litany of 'Hobson-Jobson' type instances where many perhaps improperly applied terms have become colloquial as collectors terms for various ethnographic weapons. As these terms have become firmly emplaced in our literature, it is at this point counter productive and unwarranted to consider revising them, and as has been suggested numerous times, better to simply include this data as historical footnotes in properly cited material in future reference.