Talk:carrao

, A Carib Grammar and Dictionary (of Galibi Carib) gives as the word for "limpkin", which suggests it's probably the correct etymon, but that's very much at odds with what we have in the entry. Is the reference simply wrong? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:34, 18 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Hmm... so, I looked into this, and while it's difficult to find much about this word, Manuel Alvarez Nazario's El Habla Campesina Del Pais / The Peasant Language of the Country (1990, ISBN 0847736350), page 292, says: "Algunos otros nombres autóctonos del Nuevo Mundo [...] proceden de lenguas amerindias continentales: del náhuatl, sinsonte; del guaraní, carrao." The footnote at the end cites "A. Malaret, op. cit., passim; L. Hernandez Aquino, op. cit., passim; M. Alvarez Nazario, El influjo indígena, pp. 62-63; M. A. Morinigo, Diccionario manual de americanismos, Buenos Aires, 1969, pp. 127, 129." As best I can tell, the first two works intended are either Augusto Malaret's Lexicón de fauna y flora (1961) or his Diccionario de americanismos (1946), which I can't find an accessible version of, and Luis Hernández Aquino's Diccionario de voces indígenas de Puerto Rico (1977). I can find a 1993 edition of Aquino's work, which does say "Carrao. (Del guaraní caráu.) Aramus picus picus." Using that last spelling, I also found that Johannes Wilbert and Karin Simoneau, Folk Literature of the Toba Indians (1989), volume 2, page 227, in discussing "the origin of the caraú", say in a footnote "Kayá is the Toba name for a long-legged bird which the Criollo-Guarani call caraú (Aramus guarauna)." Notwithstanding disagreement over which Aramus species is meant, this supports Guarani derivation. I searched for these spellings + Guarani OR Guaraní OR Carib OR Galibi and didn't spot anything asserting that the word, at least as used in English or Spanish, is from Cariban, but spelling is so variable it's possible I missed something. I did, however, also see that Lise Winer's Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad & Tobago (2009, ISBN 077357607X) defines "crao, carau, crau" as Aramus guarauna = A. scolopaceus, A. guarauna [...] limpkin" and derives the Trinidadian word "fr call"... it seems conceivable that more than one language, including perhaps Carib, could have independently derived the word from the bird's call. - -sche (discuss) 01:37, 19 June 2019 (UTC)