Talk:Taos
Latest comment: 15 years ago by Ishwar in topic Final S
Final S[edit]
How did the final S get on this word? 24.29.228.33 05:09, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
- The speculation is that Tao was a count noun that could be pluralized like other count nouns in Spanish that refer to persons of particular ethnic groups. But, at some point in time the plural noun Taos changed from countable to noncountable Taos and hence no longer analyzable into Tao + -s.
- It probably wasnt borrowed into Spanish straight from Taos but rather from another Tanoan language like Tewa (who are further south and had an earlier contact with the Spanish). All of these languages have cognate words.
- Note that there is no record of this so this is just speculation, but it is more plausible than another guess that it came from a particular cross called tao in Spanish which was shaped like the Greek letter tau. Ishwar 05:19, 25 August 2008 (UTC)