James Tauber's Blog 2005/07/21
Kaju Katli
My favourite Indian sweet is Kaju Katli.
Kaju means cashew. Are the two words cognate? Or is one a loan word (and in which direction?)
UPDATE (2005-07-22): Merriam-Webster claims cashew is from the Portuguese acajú. Platt's Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English says that काजू is probably from...you guessed it—the Portuguese word acajú. But even the Portuguese acajú is just a loan word from the Tupi acajú.
by James Tauber : Created on July 22, 2005 : Last modified July 22, 2005 : Categories linguistic_observations : 3 comments (permalink)