"Saibashi" in Canadian Japanese; LeJeune's numbers

[Jeffrey Kopp]

At 10:22 PM 5/12/2003, David D. Robertson wrote:

>This consonant /b/ really does puzzle me in the Canadian Japanese word.

I personally doubt it was a pun or a joke.  Remember we can only readily
discern sounds we heard during our own early childhoods
(language-development years), which is why we have accents. Our knowledge
of how the Jargon sounded to Bostons or English sounds to the Japanese
probably isn't much help in determining how Native languages (or even
French) sounded to them.

(My son is practicing his college French by Internet telephony with a girl
in Toronto, and therefore discovering the differences between contemporary
Canadian French and what he's been taught in school here. But anyone not a
Canadian historian or linguist can only try to imagine what it would have
been like a century years ago.)

There is also of course the wide variance in orthography, so there's
considerable chance of error there. As the dictionaries were relied upon by
later arrivals, a transcription error could well have found its way into
usage. Bear in mind the number of Americans who pronounce the silent "t" in
"often."

I dunno any Japanese Canadians; they might be a hard-to-find minority.
Someone in a university up there might be in the best position to meet one
and ask. (Barbara? George?)

>LhaXayam.  What's hard to understand is Father LeJeune's rationale for
>assigning a given page number to a given page!  I think Pilling's
>bibliography mentions the seemingly haphazard numbering, not noticeably
>consistent from issue to issue of "Kamloops Wawa".

I suspect LeJeune had several works in progress simultaneously, reaching
completion at different times (some probably remained unfinished),
resulting in apparently haphazard numbering. Or he might have set aside
blocks of numbers for various projects. There was also something kind of
frantic about his voluminous output, so it's also possible he was just
confused. (He might even have "inflated" his page numbers to make his
output appear bigger than it was; he was very gung on his pet invention of
the KW, making nearly incredible claims for its prevalence and popularity.)

(He impresses me as quite a character. If one had use of a time machine for
only a few hours, I'd be tempted to spend some of it meeting the guy.)

Jeff

P.S. Has anybody any clues to the "mystery dictionary"? (I haven't heard a
word yet.) I have a few more pages (including one of dialog) I could post.
The author cites Eels for one section, but for the most part, it appears
based on personal knowledge of Puget Sound usage; the orthography is
unique, bearing no relation to the other works I have on hand. I suspect it
might have been an ad-hoc. unpublished internal government handbook. (The
thrust of the Q&A examples suggest its being a court and/or policeman's
reference.)

J.
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