(O)maha

[Michael Mccafferty]

Let me just add a couple things:

1) Aux Mahas would be perfectly good French for referring to where these
folks lived/or where you, as a French person, was heading. We see this
form *very often* in the Illinois Country, for example

2) Aux Pes, Aux Mis, Aux Cas, Aux Poux, Aux Ouias, oh oh oh.

Marquette wrote < Maha > on his map of the Mississippi, a name he got from
the Illinois-speaking Peoria.

Michael McCafferty

On Sun, 21 Mar 2004, Koontz John E wrote:

> On Sat, 20 Mar 2004, Alan Hartley wrote:
> > The earliest I've seen with O- is 1814 H. M. BRACKENRIDGE Views
> > Louisiana I. vi. 76 "Mahas, (or Oo-ma-ha) Reside on the Maha creek."
> >
> > This doesn't seem like "aux" to me.
>
> Do you mean in general, or in the context of this example?  I admit the
> idea has its weaknesses, of course.  Apart from simple issues of
> satisfactory attestation, lack of parallelism in handling of Osage, and
> distinguishing this approach from truncation, the u-pronunciation of the
> locative or directional prefix in Omaha-Ponca (*o > u, *u > i, *i > i) is
> a possible issue.  However, all the adjacent and downriver Siouan groups
> retain o, and the u is not a particularly high one.
>
> What if you think of the citation here in French terms, "Mahas, (ou
> ou-ma-ha)  Demeurent au ruisseau Maha."  I think you could fairly say au
> Maha or aux Mahas, depending on whether you refer to the creek or the
> people.  Or is the preposition a correct in this context in French?  My
> French is definitely sort of catch as catch can.
>
>
>