Talk:Avoidance speech

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[edit] cool

thanks to the authors for creating this page! – ishwar  (speak) 03:34, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for adding to it. If you have a reference for avoidance speech in Native American languages, that would be good. ACW 19:26, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

One thing I remember from the one semester of Navajo I took is that you don't address your mother-in-law directly in the second person. Instead of saying "Would you please pass the salt" you say "It would be nice if someone would pass the salt", and she knows you mean her. Angr (talk • contribs) 13:14, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I was thinking about two different things, which differ in some ways with Australian languages. (1) what Angr mentions. Apachean languages have several different 3rd person pronominal prefixes. One of these, which is usually called the "4th person" in Athabascan terminology, is used for showing politeness, especially towards those with whom one is in an avoidance relationship (e.g. between a man and his mother-in-law). The prefixes are used within verbs and on postpositions. The prefixes can also be used to distinguish between two different third person referents (for example, by using the normal 3rd pers. prefix for one referent and the 4th pers. prefix for the other referent), for unknown referents, and for referents that the speaker does not want to refer to openly (and there are some other functions noted in the Navajo literature). This is a grammatical issue and not an issue of lexical replacement. Beside language, avoidance in these cultures ranged from showing general restraint in behaviour to keeping out of the visual range of the relative (the case with the Chiricahua).

(2) The other thing, I thought of, involves name taboos of deceased persons/relatives. I know of 2 languages: Tonkawa and Northern Pomo. In Northern Pomo, deceased relatives must not be mentioned by name. The relatives are identified through other means (for example by saying instead: "the one married to a white man"). Tonkawa has a taboo where words that are the same or similar to a deceased person's name must be replaced with another word. This also involves changing one's name if a person with a similar name has died. Thus, many Tonkawa adopted Comanche names to avoid the name problem.

All of these are not quite the same as Australia, but they are similar. – ishwar  (speak) 07:54, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

References on it are scarce, but I hear Albanian uses avoidance words - like "may G-d close its mouth" for "wolf." 03:12, 2006 August 14 71.96.134.211 (talk · contribs)

[edit] examples

I am interested in reading more examples. Can anybody provide some more? Maimone 05:42, 15 February 2007 (UTC)