I came across a great word: atlatl (rhymes with battle-battle), a stick used to throw a spear or large dart faster, farther (over 100 meters) and harder than a man otherwise could.

The atlatl goes back almost 20,000 years, and it put man at the top of the food chain. I gather this weapon that enabled man to hunt animals, and thus to move past the gatherer-scavenger life of an ape. Primitive man used it all continents. In some places it was supplanted by the bow and arrow (another means to propel a dart), which has the advantage that its can be used with no sudden movements that might alert the prey.

The name atlatl is from the Aztec language, and the Spanish conquistadors in the New World feared it more than any other native weapon. An early account says it "is capable of throwing a dart … completely through a man armed with a coat of mail."

Mechanical details below, for those who wish. Perhaps you, as I, had heard of a "throwing stick" and thought it was simply a stick is thrown. That's half right: another meaning is "a stick that throws"; that is, an atlatl.

Mechanical details:
The atlatl is a two-foot stick, of thickness that fits easily in your fist, with a spur at one end.¹ With it you hurl a six-foot spear.

Grab the atlatl handle (non-spur end) in your right fist, spur end up, and reach back as if to hurl it. But instead, use your left hand to lay the spear atop it, and reach up your right index finger to encircle and hold the spearshaft. To keep the spear from swinging side to side, slide it back until its butt end rests against the atlatl's spur. (The spearsbutt end has a shallow dimple in it, to accommodate.)

Now you are holding both atlatl and spear, stably. Move your arm as if you were hurling the combination, but release the spear only; retain the atlatl.

In effect the atlatl acts as a 2-foot extension of your arm, giving you more speed, more range and more force to pierce your target. The springiness of the spear also adds power, much as a diver benefits from the springiness of the diving board.

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¹ To make it, cut a 2-foot branch, trim off side-branches, and lash on a small piece of wood to serve as the spur. Or cut your branch immediately below a side-branch which, trimmed back to a 1-inch stub, is your spur.

It's funny what one person considers a new word, but another considers it common. I would have thought it common, but then I've taken a good many anthropology classes, and have seen the word in that context many times.

The tl in Nahuatl (i.e., Aztec) language, which is still spoken by many in Mexico, stands for a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative /ɬ/. Actually, I think the tl is a t followed by a /ɬ/. This sound also occurs in Welsh where it is represented graphemically by a ll. Nahuatl is an ergative language, and the tl is its absolutive ending. Many words ending in -ate in Spanish (and some borrowed into English) are Nahutal in origin. Tomatoe (tomate), chocolate, etc.

quote:

Nahuatl is an ergative language, and the tl is its absolutive ending.

Help! Please translate!

Many of you may be familiar with accusative languages. These are languages that have cases tha mark nouns in relationship to a verb. For example, The subject of a verb is in the nominative (nom.) case and the direct object of a verb is in the accusative (acc.). English no longer has much to do in the way of cases; it uses word order to mark these relationships. A Latin example:

1. Marcus puellam amat.
(Mark loves the girl.)

Marcus is in the nom. case and puellam is in the acc. It doesn't really much matter grammatically where the words in sentence 1 go.

2. Amat Marcus puellam.
(Mark loves the girl.)

The ending -us is nom. ending and the -am is acc. Other European languages till use cases systems: e.g., Slavic languages, German.

You might think that this is pretty much the only way to mark nouns' relationships to verbs, but it's not. At least a third of the world's languages use what's called the ergative system. In this system, you need to distinguish between transitive and intransitive verbs. The subject of an intransitive verb and the direct object of a transitive verb use the same case (the absolutive), but the subject of a transitive verb uses a different one (the ergative).

Wow - I had no idea about all that language stuff.

I have, however, seen atlatls in use, and even tried throwing sticks with one . . . once. I'm not a weapon-type person.

Also, when I've heard it pronounced (for instance, by the reenactors) they've always said "at-lattle", rhyming with "at battle" rather than with "battle battle". Of course, there is the complication that several of them live in West Virginia (shall we talk about regional dialects again?).

The tl in the English pronuciation of atlatal is pronounced like a t followed by an l according to English phonology. I was just talking about the Nahuatl pronuciation. Most Americans would pronounce the t as a alveolar flap rather than an voiceless alveolar stop as the t in city. This is usually described by other speakers of English as a d (voiced alveolar stop), but they are two different sounds.

[Fixed typo.]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

A week ago I'd never heard this word. Now that I have discovered it, it cropped up on TV tonight. The highbrow quiz show "University Challenge" asked a question regarding what would be the correct use of an Atlatl.

The team didn't know. Shame they don't read our board.

quote:

Shame they don't read our board.

Well, let's entice them!

Isn't it interesting how as soon as something is brought up on a board, you tend to see it in real life? Just a few days ago on OEDILF I had posted that I had never heard anyone pronounce "affluence" as "a-FLU-ence." Then today, during a very boring meeting, someone said, "blah, blah, blah, a-FLU-ent couple, blah, blah, blah..." Of course, my ears perked up!