"Quinnat" crosslinguistically; early contact-period salmon names

[Dave Robertson]

Klahowya,

Thanks to Deane (good to hear from you!), Henry, Mike, Alan, Theresa pi khanawi-lhaksta, for a good discussion here.

It's quite something, I think, that Mid-Columbia Sahaptin shares with Chinookan -- an unrelated language -- a name for a fish.  Though I don't think I've ever seen a Salishan language having this same name for a salmon, it wouldn't surprise me too much.

There is a very widespread trait in the general area of the Columbia Plateau, whereby unrelated indigenous languages share a great deal of vocabulary in the domains of animal, bird, plant, and evidently fish names.  The most intense correspondences of this sort across the boundaries of language families seem (to me, who hasn't researched this subject deeply) to hold between Chinookan and Sahaptian.  However, there are parallel relationships of this kind between e.g. Sahaptian and Salishan, as with the words for "Coyote" (and "White person"!); between Kutenaian & Salishan; and probably even involving less well-known language groups like Chemakuan or the extinct Athapaskan languages of Washington.

One crosslinguistically common bird name which members of this list may recognize is /XatXat/, "duck", usually specifiable to "mallard".  This word is a core vocabulary item in Chinook Jargon, but can be found also with only minor variations in Chinookan, Sahaptian, and Salishan languages (at the least).

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One other point of interest -- In the early period of NW Indian contact with the outsiders, a time I'll crudely limit to 1900 and before, there were lots and lots of words of Indian origin used to denote "salmon".  Speakers of English and other non-Indian languages seem to have felt a great desire to be able to specify kinds of salmon (for economic purposes?).

At the present day, we still have quite an inherited mishmash of Northwest salmon words in English -- for me, sockeye, coho, pink, chinook, and steelhead are terms I've heard all my life -- and in earlier days you'd find many more, with much more variation.  This would be a fine topic for a research paper:  The range of salmon terms in NW English as it has varied across geography and across time.  There are plenty more items to add to the list:  Blueback, tyee, chum, quinnat, etc. etc.

Let it not go unmentioned that a similar study of names of indigenous plants in NW English would also be nice to see.  Consider "sarvisberry"/"serviceberry"/"saskatoonberry"; "Hudson Bay tea"; "kinnikinnik"; "red willow"; "skunk cabbage"; the range of trees referred to as "pine"; "honeysuckle"(?); and so on.  This use of ethnobotanical methodology would certainly fascinate me, but then, this is one of my personal obsessions.

Cheers,
Dave

Dave
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