Nov. 7th, 2008 09:21 pm
आज का शब्द / آج كا شبد / ਅੱਜ ਦਾ ਸ਼ਬਦ
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muckefuckIn the Rushdie novel I'm reading, he's just introduced a character with the nickname of Kachhwa Karnail. This is glossed as "Colonel Turtle/Tortoise". The word has a bewildering number of variant spellings in Hindi; कछुआ kucchuaa is, for what it's worth, the one preferred by Shabdkosh. Urdu and Panjabi equivalents are کچهوا and ਕਛਵਾ/ਕਛੂਆ, respectively.
However, the most common Panjabi form seems to be ਕੱਛੂ kacchhoo, either alone or in the compound ਕੱਛੂ ਕੁੰਮਾ kacchhoo kuMmaa (where ਕੁੰਮਾ kuMmaa appears to be yet another synonym). Another variant is ਕੱਛਪ kacchap, which appears in Hindi as कच्छप, कछप, or कछुप and in Urdu as کچهپ, not to mention variants without the second syllable. The underlying etymon for all these cases appears to be Sanskrit कच्छप kacchapa "marsh inhabitant" from कच्छ "marsh" (source of the toponym Kutch for a region in Gujarat).
So far no Bollywood hits that mention turtles, but I'm still looking!
However, the most common Panjabi form seems to be ਕੱਛੂ kacchhoo, either alone or in the compound ਕੱਛੂ ਕੁੰਮਾ kacchhoo kuMmaa (where ਕੁੰਮਾ kuMmaa appears to be yet another synonym). Another variant is ਕੱਛਪ kacchap, which appears in Hindi as कच्छप, कछप, or कछुप and in Urdu as کچهپ, not to mention variants without the second syllable. The underlying etymon for all these cases appears to be Sanskrit कच्छप kacchapa "marsh inhabitant" from कच्छ "marsh" (source of the toponym Kutch for a region in Gujarat).
So far no Bollywood hits that mention turtles, but I'm still looking!
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