I. Hancock re "Saibashi" in Canadian Japanese

[David D. Robertson]

Dear kanawi-lhaksta,

In his intriguing short piece titled "A Chinook Jargon Loanword in Canadian
Japanese" (_American Speech_, vol. 44:231-232, 1969), Ian Hancock discusses
the term <saibashi> referring to Canadian Indians.  He says it's "derived
from the Chinook Jargon word <siwash> ['saiwaS]".

Hancock notes too that the Japanese Canadians say the word entered the
language due to Japanese fishermen's time spent working the BC coast.

Near-synonyms offered are <dojin> "aboriginal" and <indian> from English.
(Would that sound like [injian]?)  The author says the "closest Japanese
term to <saibashi> phonetically is <saibashiru> 'clever, precocious', and
the possibility of folk-etymologizing cannot be discounted."

On this last point I'd like to raise a question or two. -- Can anyone here
speak authoritatively about Japanese? -- By searching www.google.com, I've
turned up 62 hits for <saibashi>, virtually all of which refer to long,
thick Japanese chopsticks for cooking.  Is there any chance that Canadian
Japanese has <saibashi> due to some sort of lexical interference from the
Jargon and English term "stick (Indians)"?

This seems a bit of a long shot, but the form of the Canadian Japanese word
sets me to wondering; after all, isn't Japanese perfectly capable of
pronouncing the Jargon word <saiwashi>, nearly identically with the
Canadian English pronunciation?  In other words, I'd be interested to know
what motivates the pronunciation <saibashi>.

Your thoughts would be good to hear...

Best,

--Dave