Mistaken Eastern attributions of /waptu/ et al.

[Dave Robertson]

Dave,

George Lang has written briefly (to appear) about the attribution of /waptu/ by the Oxford English Dictionary to Cree /wapatowa/ "white mushroom".  I believe that the excellent discussion on this list (many thanks to you, Alan, for dredging up the reference) tended to establish that /waptu/ and <camas> have origins within our own region.

George also appropriately points out the untenability of another previous etymology, that of /saplil/ as being from French "la farine", which just proves that anything can seem plausible to some of the people some of the time.

"Clerk, how are you?"
Dave

"Alan H. Hartley" <ahartley at D.UMN.EDU> wrote:
>
> David,
>
> WAPATO got quite a bit of discussion on the list a while back: Henry
> Zenk said (17 Jun 99) "Berman reconstructed Proto-Kalapuya *pdo?"
>
> > But I wonder if many words attributed to eastern language origins
> > have been biased by the east to west migration of people and linguists?
>
> I can think of one case in which it was clearly the opposite that
> occurred: the origin of the Eng. word CAMAS has long been attributed to
> Nootka, but it's evident that it came from Nez Perce and entered CJ from
> the east.
>
> Alan
>
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