French-Chinook list

[David D. Robertson]

About <la mes-tir> for "hand":

(A) My money says that it's just the result of a proofreader's error,
misplacing one variant of the word for "medicine" next to "hand".

(B) The final <r> is ditto, a mis-typesetting as we so commonly find in
19th c. sources for <n>.

(C) Commonly found variants in CJ for "medicine" include forms like
<lametsin>, <lamestin>, <lamechin>.

-- Dave






On Sat, 18 May 2002 10:46:17 -0700, Mike Cleven <ironmtn at BIGFOOT.COM> wrote:

>janilta wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Hmm, no idea for this 'empouillé§ (=> enpooy) (perhaps actually
>> 'epouiller' ie 'to take away the lice' ??), nor for (la main =>
>> leh'ma/la mes-tir; la m餥cine => la-met-sin /) 'la-mes-tir'...
>> ab-ba =>"eh bien"; quite likely, in the usual Fr. pronunciation, the 'i'
>> is mute thus more like 'e-ben'.
>
>Hmmmm.  There's at least a consonantal congruity (to coin a term)
>between enpooy and inapoo, which is indeed the word for louse/lice;
>sopena inapoo (jumping "louse") is a flea.  The page I got this from
>didn't say which region of the Skookum Illahee this list of usages came
>from, but ya hafta wonder if there's any connection between enpooy and
>inapoo given the related context.
>
>What _could_ "la mes-tir" come from; divorcing it from "hand" and
>"medicine" altogether, is there any French word you can think of that's
>similar.  Has "la mestir" hasn't shown up in any other wordlist - ??
>
>> I think we discussed already the following (double origin) :
>> mousquet => mooskeh (usually "musket");
>
>On the subject of guns I've begun to wonder about the usual assignment
>of kalapeen/carabine to French origin.  Part of the reason is I was
>talking to some of the young Russian pizza delivery guys who hang out at
>my regular morning Starbucks yesterday, and sure enough "karabin" is a
>Russian word; the other part of the reason is that Russian rifles were
>already in evidence in the BC Interior at the time of Simon Fraser's
>trip down the river that came to bear his name, as well as of course
>along the coast.  The Boston prononciation/parallel word here is
>"carbine" - I'm not sure about Kingchauch; point is the French (and
>French goods) weren't involved in the coastal trade (which was how the
>BC Interior got their rifles; from trade with the coast).  Just a
>speculation overall, but we automatically assign this word to French
>without considering the possible Russian option.  Of course "carabine"
>probably came to Russian _from_ French, but that's a slightly different
>story.  Anyone have any idea as to which area/year it first appeared in?
>
>
>  (je) suppose => se-spoze (spose)
>> ('suppose/supposons que' may begin a sentence, 'je' is useless here).
>
>Maybe a Canadianism/voyageurism to retain the 'je', perhaps; sounds
>kinda familiar......
>
>>
>> Regards, Yann
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>--
>Mike Cleven
>http://www.cayoosh.net (Bridge River Lillooet history)
>http://www.hiyu.net (Chinook Jargon phrasebook/history)