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submitted 6 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Source of quote: Ben Palmer

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

From your source, wikipedia:

"According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term may come from the Nahuatl mallihuan, meaning "prisoner".[12] Author Martin Booth notes that this etymology was popularized by Harry J. Anslinger in the 1930s, during his campaigns against the drug.[14] However, linguist Jason D. Haugen finds no semantic basis for a connection to mallihuan, suggesting that the phonetic similarity may be "a case of accidental homophony".[15]: 94 Cannabis is not known to have been present in the Americas before Spanish contact, making an indigenous word an unlikely source."

You're saying a guy named Harry Anslinger popularized a Spanish slang word in the 1930s from a Nahuatl word, while campaigning against Cannabis, and you're arguing this makes the word of Spanish language origin?

And the S in skull would be a C for cráneo

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

The etymology that was in question there in your excerpt was that it came from indigenous word Nahautl mallihuan. But the only suggestion of this is from a biased source. In other words it is unlikely that the word predates Spanish in Mexico. I didn't claim that. I said that the word comes from Mexican Spanish.

If you kept reading, you would see:

The word "marijuana" as we know it today did not appear until 1846 in Farmacopea Mexicana, though it was spelled "mariguana". In most following instances, the word was spelled marihuana.[21][22]

Also, btw, I'm not arguing in favor of the supposed translation, I'm just not pretending that Spanish speakers don't call it Marijuana when the word is originally Spanish and they definitely still do call it that. Name me a word in English that isn't borrowed from Spanish that has a J that sounds like an H. Jalapeño, Mojito, Jicama... all Spanish words originally. Same with Marijuana.