tyee / tia

[Jeffrey Kopp]

I was intrigued by Tony's citing "ka'naX," which differs widely from the
other offerings and references cited here. "Tyee" came into the Jargon from
Nootkan (who by some stretch may have gotten it from Chinese); it appears
to me "tia" may have worked its way from there into Chinook usage, and then
got confused somehow for what the Chinooks originally used.

So I went to see how Gibbs described it in his "Alphabetical Vocabulary of
the Chinook Language" (Craimoisy, 1863), which is late and sketchy (only
600 words), but the only reference I have on hand anything close to "Old
Chinook."  Therein he lists "Chief" as "kuk-ke-ma-nan, tl-kak-a-ma-nan"
(accented on the third and second+fourth syllables, respectively). The
second pronunciation bears some very vague resemblance (bearing in mind the
crude orthography, and the frequency of contractions in Chinook usage), but
that shoe doesn't seem to quite fit, either. (It's much closer to "Father,"
which he shows first as "tl-ka-ma-ma.")

I wanted to see what Gibbs offered for the English translation of something
looking like "ka'naX," but unfortunately this short book is organized only
E>C.  However, hastily cruising it for likely possibilities (relations and
things of size or power), I was interested to notice "e-kan-a-wak-so-ba,
kun-na-wok-so-ba" listed for "Thunder." I wonder if there might be any
connection there (i.e., "powerful speaker"?).

It's not too great a stretch for me; cf. "ekanam" for "Tale" (others add
"story"), in light of the high importance of oratory in Native society.

Regards,

Jeff

At 06:40 AM 4/18/2003, Alan H. Hartley wrote:
>Can anyone tell me what is the relationship between tyee and tia?
>Meriwether Lewis writes [3 Jan 06 in Gary Moulton's edition of the
>Journals 6.162] "we were visited by our near neighbours, Chief or Tia
>[a-acute], Co-mo-wool..and six Clatsops." Moulton says in a note that
>tia is the Chinookan word for 'chief', equivalent to the CJ term tayi
>(from Nootkan).
>
>Thanks,
>
>Alan
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/chinook/attachments/20030421/29b5fe41/attachment.htm>