Whence the CJ word for 'grizzly bear'? (fwd)

[David Robertson]

LhaXayEm, qhata mEsayka?

Mike asks if there's any relation between /sayEm/ and [Coast Salish]
/si7am/.  In a word, nope.  I myself am not aware of any possible
connection, and several facts work against such a linkage.  The basic
meaning of /si7am/ is something like "upper-class person", and it's only
vaguely similar in shape (by linguists' standards) to /sayEm/.

...Unless of course we look at the older Chinook Jargon vocabularies,
specifically those from the region near Puget Sound, in which both words
are represented with a single spelling <siam>.  But there's so much more
good information available to us now!

Pi alta na lhatEwa.
Dave


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