naka$ay

[R. Rankin]

>  The word nu ka shay, nu as in nut, ka as in cut and shay as in aye, my cousin
said that his mother used to scream it at him when she was furious with him.
Anyone have any thoughts on what it could mean?

Hi Tom,

I ran all the variant spellings of this I could think of through Giulia
Oliverio's Tutelo (YesaN) dictionary but came up with very little.  No entry for
this word per-se.

Within Siouan, however, the word naka (sometimes with the first "a" nasalized
and pronounced like "uh" as you indicate) is nearly always the verb for "sit" or
"be sitting".  I would hazard a guess that the expression probably means
something very close to "SIT DOWN!!"  As in "siddown an' shaddup".   :-)    Just
what a harassed mom might say to a pesky kid.  This is just a guess, but it at
least fits the context and most of the word you gave.

There is also another pair of verbs that are a little similar.

akaknaka   'to go out'
akaknakise   'go out of a lodge'

So a translation as "Get out!" is also a possibility, I suppose.  The consonant
you write as "sh", as in English 'fresh' is uncommon in Tutelo as written by
most of the transcribers, since this sound evolved into "ch" in Tutelo.  But
there was a certain amount of variability in the pronunciation of "s" as "sh" in
some of the documents.

Bob