Enit?

[Mike Cleven]

At 10:21 AM 6/23/99 -0700, David Gene Lewis wrote:
>I disagree that the word enit is non-native, I would think the social
>context would truly determine the meaning of the word. The native use of
>the word would be different from the non-native use and would have
>phenomenological connections which do not exist in the non-native world. I
>have heard this word used extensively on the reservations in Oregon and I
>do not always understand what is meant. What ever the origin of the word,
>that would not necessarily determine the word ownership. Besides it is
>hard for me to make a firm determination of origination over e-mail.

I'm not sure I've ever heard of a language being "owned"; except by
chauvinists, that is.  Do Jargonists 'own' the phrases "from the sticks" or
"he's a skookum guy", or "he's some kind of high muckamuck from the
government"?

Anyway, there's another "variant" of this in B.C., perhaps definable as a
subset of the Canadian habit of mumbling and muttering instead of clearly
articulating consonants; "i(d)nit" where the 'd' is passed over "within"
the 'n'.