Lakota elephants!

[Clive Bloomfield]

Thanks for the reply, Willem. Must get that 1970 edition. Those dots  
& commas are driving me spare!

Mais bien sûr, mon cher Willem, c'est bien exact ça! Je vous en  
remercie infiniment, de cette correction : c'était bien une erreur  
grossière. Ça m'apprendra à me mêler de la belle langue belge (et  
française), d'une manière tellement cavalière, une langue si pleine  
d'esprit et de précision, celle de Maeterlinck et Verhaeren,  n'est- 
ce pas! ;) Enfin, je ne peux pas m'en empêcher, à ce qu'il paraît.  
Mais après tout, c'est comme ça, qu'on apprend à les parler mieux,  
les langues - c'est à dire : en perpétrant, de temps en temps, des  
"massacres" grammaticales, non? :-) En fait, je me sers de 'La  
Méthode Bloomfield' pour l'Apprentisage des Langues, à savoir  : "Le  
Chemin du Soloecisme Fréquente". Et voilà! Ha ha.


Thanks too for the fascinating snippet of Apache there. I guess the  
Navajo item : bíchįįh yee 'adilohii (Y&M, 1987, p.876) would convey  
something similar, eh? (My computer can't handle the nazalized i- 
acute, I fear) Not that I'm any expert on Diné Bizaad, of course -  
I've been trying, with meagre success, to learn to read it for about  
20 years! Those verb-complexes seem fiendish - all that information  
packed into a verb-form, and all those seeming irregularities! But  
totally enchanting, of course! No doubt structures of Western Apache  
would be comparable, eh?
By comparison, the vagaries of the various Lakhota 'ki-/kici/kichi-/ 
khi-/k- forms seem much easier to cope with.

BTW, I dare say you're quite correct about that greater likelihood,  
particularly in view of the info. from other Amerind languages.
I actually wanted the etymology to involve that meaning you mention  
below, but was lured into a sort of 'to-aspirate-or-not-to-aspirate  
idée fixe', for a moment there!

best regards,

Amitiés,

Clive.

P.S. "Mais enfin, c'était  vraiement élémentaire, M. Poirot, n'est- 
ce pas!"


On 22/01/2008, at 1:17 PM, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote:

> We'll need to ask a couple of native speakers about the mysterious  
> okicu part. It is much more likely that the meaning intended is  
> something like "picks up with the upper lip" (of the end of the  
> trunk).  That is by far the most striking thing with an elephant.   
> In Apache, elephant is "the one that ropes with his nose". It's  
> nice to keep the Buechel-Manhart (1970) edition around...  The  
> diacritics are clearer there.
>
>> Il ne s'agit qu' un crime passionel, monsieur le juge! ;)
>
> Permettez-moi de corriger ceci.  "Il ne s'agit que d'un crime  
> passionnel..."
>
> Willem (a compatriot of Georges Simenon and of Hercule Poirot)
>
>