early loans in Dakotan

Koontz John E John.Koontz at colorado.edu
Mon Sep 17 15:19:33 UTC 2001


On Mon, 17 Sep 2001, Bruce Ingham wrote:
> From a recent discussion on bows and arrows, I gathered that it
> was thought that a number of basic lexemes may be borrowings
> into Dakotan from neighbouring languages, Indian or European.  Do
> any of you have any good examples.  Ones that I know of include
> khunkhunla 'pickle' presumably French 'cocombre', khukhus^e 'pig'
> French 'cochon', bebela 'baby' Fr bebe or Engl baby.  Are there any
> anyone knows of from Indian languages. ???

You can add S^aglas^a to the list of European loans, from les Anglais (but
with the Algonquian diminutive).

Siebert suggested that an Algonquian term for tamarack was borrowed into
Dakota.  It's slipping my mind at the moment, but in Buechel it occurs
compounded with a color term (blue/green?) in the name of a color of loin
cloth.

In the other direction, I suspect OP iNdakkudha is a loan from Da
dakhota/khola.

We've mentioned 'bow'.  Other possible loans include wagmuN (and hence
wagmeza < wagmuN heza) and igmuN, also c^haNli, -thuNwaN, and
-khota/khola, though the sources are obscure.  In most cases the clue is
an unusual cluster or a very irregular correspondence set, combined with
the existence of look-alikes in other families.  These don't always allow
us to be sure what the source for the terms is, as the lookalikes are
fairly widespread.  Another very irregular set is 'dance', cf. OP
wac^hi(gaghe).  Lookalikes for 'nine' cf. OP s^aNkka (-e?) are also pretty
widespread in the East, but I don't remember if Dakotan participates in
this set.

'Horse' from something like kawara from caballo is fairly widespread.  I
think the intermediate source here is Wichita.  'Kkawa' is the normal term
for 'horse' in Osage, and I've seen Kkawaha 'horsehide' (?) as a name im
OP, even though it uses the old 'dog' term normally.  I once saw a Mandan
name in kawa- I thought might have the same explanation, but I forget the
details. for 'horse' in Osage, and I've seen Kkawaha 'horsehide' (?) as a
name im OP, even though it uses the old 'dog' term normally.  I once saw a
Mandan name in kawa- I thought might have the same explanation, but I
forget the details.

I'd argue that any band names with waz^az^a in them were loans from
Dhegiha, and there are some.  One might also wonder about forms like
'Saones' (cf. OP sa^aN 'Sioux') for which there are widespread lookalikes.
In general, many - though not all - ethnonyms are borrowed.



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