French-Chinook list

[Jeffrey Kopp]

Re (c):  Curiously, the only misspelled English word I found in Gibbs
was "Medecine," in the following entry:

La-més-tin, or La-mó-tchin, n.  French, LA MÉDECINE.  Medecine, not
including magic. 

Could be he just confused the French spelling for the English, or it
may have been a typesetter's error.

(I left it as is; my Web and print versions of Gibbs are verbatim.
We probably ought to footnote it as [sic] in the reprint.)

J.

On Sat, 18 May 2002 18:44:58 -0400, "David D. Robertson"
<ddr11 at COLUMBIA.EDU> wrote:

>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)