(urth) Grand Unified Theory

[David Stockhoff]

Webster's Third implicates Arabic as well, but confirms the Greek 
connection.

The Greeks colonized and ruled Central Asia for hundreds of years. They 
would have had plenty of opportunity to come up with imaginative names 
for winds.

It must have gotten into Cantonese from India as a sort of technical 
nautical term for a strong ocean storm wind.

James Wynn wrote:
>
>>> Wynn - The word "typhoon" comes from "Typhon" -- not that it would 
>>> prevent
>>> Wolfe from associating the two anyway if he wanted to.
>>
>> Marques - That's actually open to question.
>> - _Typhon_ is an english spelling pronunciation of greek <tu'fwn>, 
>> which would be more or less 'two FAWN' [tu'fO:n] if read 'correctly'.
>> - _typhoon_ is an english transcription of [tai'fun], from some 
>> language spoken along the margins of the Indic ocean.
>>
>> Even if one posits that [tai'fun] is ultimately from the greek, one 
>> still would have to explain how did greek [tu] become [tai]. The 
>> english [ai] is merely from the english great vowel shift compounded 
>> with a misreading of greek <y> as [i], which it never was. Had 
>> english gotten the word by natural borrowing, rather than in misread 
>> written form centuries after, it wouldn't have [ai].
>>
>> Not impossible, but unlikely.
>
> Well, I'm not a linguist so I can't begin to break it down. But each 
> language has it's own special tendencies to change over time. And the 
> vowels change the fastest. The most common etymology I have read is 
> that "typhon" came to Hindi through Parsi in order to become 
> "typhoon". So there's a lot of room for mischief in there. But I'm 
> sure you are right that there are alternate assertions by people who 
> know a lot more about it than me. Still, the spellings and meanings 
> are similar enough that I have no doubt Wolfe would happily associate 
> them even if he knew for a fact that the words had no real 
> etymological connection.
>
> u+16b9
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