Belated comment on "Re: Mystery Language Identified/SSILA Bulletin #89 (fwd)

[Mike Cleven]

>
>The second word list turns out to be Hawaiian.  The missionary evidently
>misunderstood the English name for the Hawaiian Islands to be "San Luis"
>instead of "Sandwich."

Que mirabiloso!


snips

>First of all, the list is not Chinook Jargon, even though it includes
>some of the words that ended up in Chinook Jargon.  I've now checked
>all the words of the data you posted, and they are clearly central
>Nootkan as written by a Spaniard (<tyy> is the only question; it's
>clearly [tayi], but it now seems to mean `firstborn son';

The social status origin of this term is intriguing; certainly a firstborn
son might be someone who could _become_ a chief; or it could be that the
Spanish misinterpreted the social status of the designated person; couldn't
a young scion of a chiefly family also be "tyee"?  And wouldn't a grander
title have been used, at least locally, for an imperious lord such as
Wickanninish or Maquinna rather than the rather terse "tyee"?  Anyway, it's
often interesting how a word mutates meanings when it not only moves from
language to language, but also moves temporally _within_ a language; many
English words change meanings and contexts every half-century or so, even
every decade.  Groovy, huh?  Far out.....


 it must have
>meant something more earlier, as it does in Chinook Jargon).  Guessing
>from the inclusion of words for `bear skin' and `otter skin', the vessel
>from which this vocabulary was collected must have had some interest in
>fur trade.

_ALL_ the early expeditions had to do with the fur trade, or rather with
anything of major economic interest of which fur was perceived (at the
time) as the most obvious and pressing concern.  The Spanish motivation in
the region was primarily imperial, but it was in response to the Russian,
British and American economic activity (fur trade) in the region which was
perceived as a threat to claims of Spanish sovereignty over the whole of
the Pacific shores of both Europe and Asia........