Looking for help with "Sanganasch"

[Rankin, Robert L.]

> I’m wondering if the difference between the “S” and “L” versions of this ethnonym could reflect the difference between French singular and plural?

Yes, I'd say that's possible, even probable.

The plural form was “les anglois”, in which a marked sibilant before the initial a- led to the Sanganash term.  But the singular wouldn’t have had that.  In modern French, at least, it would be “l’anglais”, which might be a more plausible precursor to “Lagerash” or ra-kra-she.  Since the recipient languages either don’t mark singular and plural, or do it in a completely different way, it would be indifferent to them which form they adopted.


> Also, do we have any of these terms in use in the modern languages to check Native pronunciation?  Since Maximilian was German, he used ‘sch’ at the end to represent /š/.  I wonder what pronunciation value was intended by the initial ‘s-’?  In modern German, initial ‘s-’ followed by a vowel is generally pronounced /z/.  Should this term be rendered sąganaš or ząganaš?

It's hard to be sure.  There are plenty of German dialects in which "S" is still rendered as [s].  Moreover, Maximilian was cognizant of the problems in rendering Indian languages phonetically, and he made special efforts to standardize his notation.  I did a long study of his Siouan vocabularies in the new edition of his Journals from the Joslyn Museum in Omaha (which has the paintings from his expedition done by Bodmer).  Generally, Max's notation is easy to interpret.

> Sky, you might have answered this question already when you said “Based on Maximilian’s spelling for sound, it could roughly be said as “sahng-gah-nash””, but can you confirm that Maximilian’s initial s + vowel was actually pronounced /s/ in words that can be confirmed in the modern language?  An initial /z/ should match the French pronunciation better, but it might not matter if it was a borrowing from another Native language like Ojibwe.

Actually, I think Ojibwe may have the voiced pronunciation, but I may be mistaken.  Haven't checked.  Anthony may have included it in his mail.

Bob

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