Click

[Ross Clark (FOA LING)]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: George Lang [mailto:george.lang at UALBERTA.CA]
> Sent: Monday, 4 February 2002 2:12 p.m.
> To: CHINOOK at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> Subject: Click
> 
> 
> This is getting curiouser and curiouser.  A couple of weeks ago we
> had a thread on  "kleck".  Now comes "click".
> 
> Just after the kleck thread frayed out,  I had mentioned, in 
> the context
> of "clemel",  Nootka _L'ih-aq(w-)_ 'skin, hide, fur, outer covering' .
> 
> [Crossed lamba with high apostrophe, i, underdot h, hyphen, a, q
> (superscript w). hyphen].  Sapir and Swedesh, _Nootka Tales_
> (1939:313).
> 
> Since Sturgis was on the Vancouver Island coast (if I remember right)
> it might make some sense (or maybe might not to those with better
> phonetics than mine) that Alan's "click" was not Jargon per se, but  a
> so far unattested item in the Nootka Jargon (which I call the Nootka
> Lingo) derived from the above.
> 
> Ross, does that work?
> 
> George

I think that's a promising etymology, but if the medial consonant was the
pharyngeal /H/ I would have expected it to survive, giving a bisyllabic
"kleehack" or some such. Compare the word for "arrow", Nootka /c'i:Hati/,
given by Anderson as Tsee'hatte, Walker Seehatté, Moziño si-ja-ti, etc.

There is an apparently cognate word with a /t/ in it, Nootka /L'itHaq/
'skin', which turns up in the NJ with the meaning "bear skin" (or "bear" --
the early visitors saw far more skins of large land animals than they did
live specimens): Anderson Klee't'kak, Walker Klitheek, Moziño clit-jac, etc.

Ross Clark