[PapuanLanguages] cryptic borrowings

[Christian Döhler]

Hello,

I am looking for examples - in Melanesia or elsewhere - in which 
vocabulary from another language has been borrowed into a language for 
the purpose of making reference to certain topics cryptic. I am sorry 
about the clumsy description, but I hope it becomes clearer when I give 
my Komnzo example below.

There are a couple of birds in Komnzo, who play a role in a mythical 
story about the origin of the bullroarer, which is an object only for 
initiated men. According to this story, the bullroarer comes from a 
woman's vulva and a bird snatched it from there. The names of some of 
those birds involved are reduplications. Note that many Komnzo bird 
names are reduplications, but in these cases there is no baseform in the 
Komnzo lexicon. However, two of the baseforms exist in two languages of 
the area. Although the two languages are spoken about 60km away (in 
opposite directions), the respective baseform in both cases mean 
"vulva". Therefore, I assume that 1) these birds were named 
deliberately, 2) there names were choosen in order to make reference to 
that story and 3) the words were choosen from other languages in order 
to conceal this link because the story is only for initiated men.

It would be great to hear if anyone has heard of something similar and 
could maybe point me literature on the topic of "using other languages 
to conceal something (in one's own language)".

Best
Christian

-- 
Dr. Christian Döhler
Institut für Linguistik
Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
Universität zu Köln, Germany
orcid.org/0000-0002-9659-5920
--