Word for 'prairie'?

ROOD DAVID S rood at spot.Colorado.EDU
Wed Jan 28 17:58:46 UTC 2004


It may not help, but Lak. uses the word oblaye 'flat place' for 'prairie'.

David

David S. Rood
Dept. of Linguistics
Univ. of Colorado
295 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
USA
rood at colorado.edu

On Wed, 28 Jan 2004, Rankin, Robert L wrote:

> I've had one of those layman's questions that is hard to answer.  We
> have an agricultural experimental station in Central Kansas called the
> "Konza Prairie" where they work on varieties of grasses.  They want to
> know how to say 'prairie' in Kaw.  I don't have much I can tell them.
> Does any of your work with Omaha, Ponca or Osage (or other languages)
> yield any insight.
>
> I made the point that if you were born, raised and lived all your life
> on the prairie, you might not actually have a name for it.  It's just
> "home".  Similarly, if the world were covered with water, we wouldn't
> have a word for 'ocean'.
>
> I also mentioned that there is a word in Quapaw and Kaw that refers
> generally to a flat land without trees, but that it is generally thought
> of as referring to 'flood plain' along a watercourse.  The word is
> /tteghe'/ in Quapaw and /cceghe'/ in Kansa.  I think La Flesche's Osage
> has the latter form with /c/ representing [ts] instead of [c^] in that
> language.  Has anyone else encountered a good term describing the broad
> expanse of grasslands we find in the prairie/plains?
>
> Bob
>
>



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