"kiknes" and such: "The World in So Many Words"

[David Robertson]

Qhata mayka?

Allan Metcalf wrote a book, "The World in So Many Words" (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1999), which has some entertaining and readable comments
about Chinook Jargon words, and others from Northwestern languages, that
have entered English.

Highlights:

'geoduck' from Lushootseed

'sockeye' from Straits Salish:  You didn't know that, did you?  (I'd
thought it was from Halkomelem / Sto:lo Salish, but hey...)  Metcalf
points out that another word which looks English but is Indian is
'woodchuck', from Narragansett.

'kokanee' from Shuswap:  I'll quote directly;
"The name 'kokanee' apparently comes from Shuswap, a language of the
Salish family spoken in south central British Columbia, Canada.  It is the
name they gave to a river in which kokanee salmon are found.  Applied to
salmon, the name appears as early as 1875, with the spelling
'kik-e-ninnies' indicating an attempt to make it look a little more like
an English word.  Shuswap still has about five hundred speakers nowadays,
but no other Shuswap words have made a splash in our language."

'haddo' from Nisqually Salish (a pretty obscure word, really)

'sasquatch' from Halkomelem Salish

'chinook wind' from Chehalis (Upper?  Lower?)
In this entry the author notes that the first known occurrence of 'high
muckamuck' in English, "a perhaps deliberate mistranslation of a
phrase that originally meant 'lots of food'", Chinook Jargon /hayu
mEkmEk/, was in 1853; earlier than I might have guessed.  He notes that
the name 'Chinook' is Chehalis, and I assume that the Chinook word for
themselves was something like /natetanwe/, to go by Boas and Sapir.

'potlatch', he says, is from Nootka!  While that's ultimately true, the
word in that form probably would not exist without what we regard as the
conditions of Chinook Jargon's formation.  In fact, the earliest citation
of this word that Metcalf finds is from 1865, in a text which also uses
the Jargon word 'iktas' (goods).  So there!  Besides, there've got to be
earlier cites -- Jewett?  Mozin~o?  Henry and Yvonne?  In this entry
Metcalf does include the information that 'chako' as in 'cheechako' also
comes from Nootka via Jargon, so let's give him some brownie points.

'hooch' from Tlingit is explained as well, and those of you who
experienced the discussions about it here last year would find that
interesting, maybe.

'cheechako' from Chinook Jargon is here too!  In fact the author uses the
opportunity to list other English words from the Jargon:  camas (1805),
eulachon (1807), salal (1825), chum (1902), alki.  (Dates in parentheses
are the first occurrence in print in English of a given word.  I might
note that any of you could very likely make a contribution to the Oxford
English Dictionary by
	looking through old Northwestern books and
	finding, almost certainly with great ease, earlier occurrences of
		'salal' and 'chum' salmon, then
	posting your find to this list.)

Alta na lhatEwa!

Dave




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