I. Hancock re "Saibashi" in Canadian Japanese

[David D. Robertson]

LilEnd, Yann, hayu masi,

This consonant /b/ really does puzzle me in the Canadian Japanese word.
Surpassingly rare is the attestation of Chinook Jargon /sawash/ with a /v/
sound that could be reflected by a /b/ in the Japanese.  To the extent of
my knowledge of Canadian English (a foreign language, granted ;-} ), a
pronunciation ~ "sivash" isn't likely, and it seems equally unlikely that
it was French of the voyageurs or of modern-day Eastern Canadians which was
in direct contact with Canadian immigrant Japanese.

I'm left with the lingering impression that any of several odd
possibilities are at least part of the true explanation of Canadian
Japanese /saibashi/ "Indian":

Conceivably the Japanese-speakers who coined this sense of /saibashi/ were
making a pun on their word for "big fat chopsticks", for example by analogy
with the fairly widely known regional English phrase "stick Indian";

Maybe a Canadian Japanese speaker, or someone who purported to be one,
pulled a joke on Ian Hancock;

Perhaps Hancock himself was joking when he submitted his article
on /saibashi/ (!);

One can imagine that a consultant wrote down the Canadian Japanese word for
Hancock in Japanese, and the linguist later used a textbook syllabary chart
to remind himself of its pronunciation;

And so on.

This is an interesting little mystery.  I do not yet know any speakers of
Canadian Japanese who might be able to help shed light on a right answer.

--Dave