I've been looking up words for drums and words for deaf and the situation is too complicated for me. Professional linguistic historians neededon this thread. Irish bodhar and Urdu behra both mean deaf. Sordo means drum and deaf.The b-r pattern occurs in drum words(bodhran tamborine tambour tabor), and is sometimes p-r(eg kurdish tapper-phonetic spelling, I asked a kurdish friend).English deaf doesnt seem to fit in at all at first glance, until you relate it to linguistic neighbours androots: and you find doof(Dutch) toup(Old HighGerman)taub (German). Which connects straight to the t-p or t-b pattern you find in tabor,tapper,tambour Interesting, huh?