Ofologists take note!

[Marianne Mithun]

I remember Mary as saying Chitimacha with an initial affricate and final 
stress as well.

And as for the Chumash, my impression is that the ones who are using an 
initial fricative are mostly people who have recently discovered their 
ethnicity (not that it isn't genuine). The fricative gained currency as the 
'in' way to pronounce it not very long ago. I've wondered whether that 
might be simply because it seems more exotic, given the spelling. It was 
never a French word. Harrington's documents are very clear. In Chumash, the 
name is spelled with t-esh, even in the speech of the last speaker, an 
excellent speaker who died in 1965.


Marianne


--On Thursday, June 08, 2006 6:55 PM -0700 Pamela Munro <munro at ucla.edu> 
wrote:

> Now that Mary M. has reported this, I'll say (as a lurker) that hers is
> the pronunciation I've heard too, possibly from Mary Haas (I can't
> recall), but certainly from my teacher Margaret Langdon, who learned her
> names from Mary Haas -- Ch....SHAH (i.e., like Chitty Chitty Bang
> Bang...unless we should now start calling that "shitty").
>
> Since I'm writing, I'll tell you that I'm currently attending a
> conference with many ethnic Chumash people, and still lots of people are
> saying SHOEmash. Arg.
>
> Pam
>>
>
> --
> Pamela Munro,
> Professor, Linguistics, UCLA
> UCLA Box 951543
> Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
> http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/munro/munro.htm
>