Burdash again: "bardace" - attn Yann

[Forrest Pass]

"Berdache" doesn't appear in "Le Robert" (the French equivalent of the
OED).  However, "bardache" is defined as "jeune garcon servant d'amant aux
homosexuels" (young boy serving as a lover for homosexuals).  It first
appear as "bardache" in 1568, and as "bardaiche" in 1537.  Its origin is
Arabic (bardadj=slavery) through the Italian "bardasso" (young man).

Forrest Pass
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A futura videte cum pedis in veteris

On Fri, 31 Mar 2000, Mike Cleven wrote:

> In reading through the glorious verbal and imagistic thicket of Philip
> Mansel's "Constantinople: City of the World's Desire" I came across a
> reference in Ch. 7, p.177 (ppbk) cited by Mansel from Carlier de Pinon, a
> French traveller of the 18th Century, who wrote that Turks "are also very
> subject to the vice of Sodom, the grandees more than the ordinary people,
> there being hardly a captain without one or more 'bardace'".  The book isn't
> about that, of course; the chapter in question is titled "Cushions of
> Pleasure" and discusses the hedonist nature of the Ottoman capital; recipes,
> sexuality, decor, household furniture, architecture, custom, etc.  People
> wanting unusual recipe ideas are encouraged to seek out this book, if only
> for inspiration; alas, Ottoman cuisine is no more, only poorly echoed by the
> cuisines of Turkey, Persia, Greece and the Balkans....
>
> Anyway, a while back Shaw's (or Gibbs' or whomever's) attribution of
> "burdash" to a supposed French word "berdache" was disavowed by Yann, one of
> our group's native (or at least adept) French speakers; it's not a modern
> French word, according to him.  Noting that the above citation is from the
> mid-1700s, this would put it in an era where it could have come to the West
> of North America and survived in Metis/HBC French despite disappearing on
> the Continent and even, perhaps, in Quebec and Acadie.  I'm not certain from
> the source if the italicization of this word indicates French or Turkish,
> however; if it's Turkish the 'c' is like a 'j' and the final 'e' would be
> pronounced as a syllable.  Yann - where would we look for resources on Old
> French?  Could this be a Turkish loan-word into French, and thence into
> Chinook?
>
> MC
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