Q's re origin of coho and chum

[Tony Johnson]

Khanawi-Laksta,

No need to reconstruct.  Our word as used today is t'sEm, and Boas, who was really caught up on vowels, also gives t'sEm.  In Grand Ronde t'sEm is a mark or marked or a spot or spotted, or writing.  In old Chinook it is generally varigated or spotted.  Anyone who knows chum salmon would understand the description.  A note however is that chum (or dog) salmon in old Chinook was "o'laachx," and not t'sEm.

LaXyEm pus alta...

Tony A. Johnson
Sawash Ili7i

>>> "David D. Robertson" <ddr11 at COLUMBIA.EDU> 01/08/02 06:57PM >>>
Hi,

A tiny adjustment to the cited Chinuk-Wawa etymon of "chum (salmon)":

As shown in the cites provided, this word comes from something like Chinuk-
Wawa /cam/, i.e. /tsam/.  Let's ignore the vowel, but:

On historical principles, the first consonant can be safely reconstructed
as an ejective or "glottalized" voiceless affricate, whether hissing or
hushing -- especially in the Chinookan languages, "ts" and "ch" sounds
alternate productively.

Part of the evidence for this, as I believe Sally Thomason (and Terrence
Kaufman?) have pointed out, is the nearly universal spelling of the Jargon
term as <tzum> by English speakers, where an attempt is made to keep a
distinction from a "plain", non-ejective <ts> sound.

So I'd give a generalized reconstruction more like /c'am/, or else, in
Grand Ronde style, /t'sEm/.

This too is more than most want to know!

-- Dave