"Saibashi" in Canadian Japanese; LeJeune's numbers

[Colin Bruce]

Japanese Canadians at least in British Columbia are not a difficult to find Minority.  The most
famous of course being David Suzuki of "Nature of Things" fame.  I grew up as friends and neighbours
with many.  Finding a Japanese Canadian who speaks Canadian Japanese might be more difficult now
days though since many are nisei (second generation) or sansei (third generation) and may be limited
in their grandparents language.  I wish I was back in my home town instead of the other side of the
world.  Then I would go ask Mrs. Tsunota who taught me my first Japanese characters out of a great
big Japanese bible when I was six.

If Mrs. Tsunota didn't have an opinion on why she used saibashi then I would ask her how she would
write saibashi.  So far we've only been considering romanji (roman characters) which only show how
the word was pronounced.  The word may likely have been written in Katakana which is used for
foreign words like italics are in english.  But if Saibashi was written in kanji (chinese like
characters) or  a combination of hiragana (everyday characters) and kanji then we might get a better
understanding of whatever puns were intended by Japanese Canadians.  Kanji of course contains
elements of meaning and often makes use of puns and rebus-like devices.  This would really be fun to
get to the bottom of especially considering the potential for a clever and possibly flattering
meaning.





Jeffrey Kopp <jeffkopp at ATTBI.COM>@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG> on 13-05-2003 17:09:11

Please respond to Jeffrey Kopp <jeffkopp at ATTBI.COM>

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Subject:  Re: "Saibashi" in Canadian Japanese; LeJeune's numbers

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.







      ____________________________________
      Colin Bruce
      Application Developer
      Smartline Home Loans
      Phone 02 8226 3776 / 02 9877 0099
      Fax 02 9877 0952
      Email cbruce at smartline.com.au
      http://www.smartline.com.au
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