A bit more on chance similarities/ was Re: Salishan-Wakashan

[David Robertson]

Hi,

A message I sent was a little unclear:  By chance similarities, I mean
that I'm interested in occurrences like Nuucha'nulth / Nootka having
something like "tsyapuuLt" (sorry) for 'a kind of hat', and (Metis) French
having "shapo" i.e. chapeau for 'hat', AND Chinuk Wawa having "siapo" with
the same meaning.

In other words, when one of or more of the donor languages to the Jargon
***has a word very similar-looking to an item in the Jargon,
***and with a very similar meaning,
***but like Nuucha'nulth in the example above, is *not* considered to have
contributed this word to the Jargon...
That's where this interest of mine comes about.

One may ponder whether the existence of these sorts of coincidences
assisted the speakers of a given CJ donor language (and by extension those
who spoke any language natively) in learning and remembering the Jargon.

Folk etymologies of Jargon words, like that example of 'Clark(e)/Clerk,
how are you?' for "LaXa(w)yE(m) / klahowya" appropriately fit into this
idea.  And there are quite a few words I've noticed already which have
demonstrable origins in either Old Chinook or in Nuucha'nulth, but
counterparts for which in the other of these 2 languages have a remarkably
similar sound.

Worth writing a paper on someday?

Best,
Dave

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On Thu, 21 Jan 1999, Henry Kammler wrote:

> More on "Mosan"
>
> >
> > However, nope, no relation between these languages, except a social
> > acquaintance.  :-)
>
> Even rather well established language families like Wakashan should still raise
> questions. Indoeuropeanists would probably still reject the evidence on which this
> family was proposed. And if it was only for the imbalance in available material
> (quantities of Kwakiutlan stuff being easily available around the globe, while
> Nootkan materials mostly in some odd library or archive, often unpublished or
> handed out as xeroxed papers only).
>
> >
> > I have been getting very interested in the *chance* similarities between
> > random lexical items in CJ and those having the same meanings in languages
> > of this region.  But I've found nothing to suggest that these are anything
> > less than fortuitous, and non-patterned, resemblances.
>
> Where does the non-European vocabulary in CJ stem from if not from the languages of
> the region? Only *chance* similarities between random lexical items between Chinook
> or Salish or Nootka and CJ ...  ?
>
> >
> > PS -- If you want a contentious bunch of theorizers talking about possible
> > relationships among the proven language families of this planet, check out
> > the NOSTRATIC list.  Oof!
>
> Yeah, the oddest kind of  "lumpers" far from any serious linguistic methodology,
> randomly throwing together surface similiarities between Quechua, Malay, Hawai'ian,
> Greek, Aleut and Klingon...
> It's good reading, though, like Erich von Daeniken.
>
> Cheers,
> Henry
>