KW #1 solves another question

[Alan Hartley]

Leanne wrote:

> In John Dunn's vocabulary on pg 352 at
> Canadiana.org, you can see that he does something like this. I haven't
> studied John Dunn, but apparantly he arrived in Astoria 1831 from
> England, on the Ganymede, and had a stint as Commander. His 1844 book
> was published in London.
>
> If you look at the word "Claterwar", his scheme might be:
>
> a as in "cat"
> er as in "foot"
> ar as in "dog"
>
> or maybe ??
>
> a as in "cat"
> er as in "bug"
> ar as in "law"
>
> What scheme is that? It must be something common in Britian.

John Koontz calls it (or something like it) the "Lewis & Clark Phonetic
Alphabet" (http://spot.colorado.edu/~koontz/faq/orthography.htm#LCPA)

Most of the journalists of the Lewis and Clark expedition were nonrhotic
speakers of English, as I imagine was Dunn, so their nonstandard
spellings have a lot of dropped and added r's.

The question arises whether these added r's--as in warter and
musquetors--indicated a pronounced r or were simply a reverse spelling.
It's hard to say in the case of English words that in some dialects do
have an intrusive r (Warshington), but Indian words with no trace of r
and which the journalists would seldom if ever have seen written provide
pretty convincing evidence of simple reverse spelling. (In the following
list of L & C spellings, * marks words written both with and without r,
including the English 'exhaust' and French 'cache'.)

In stressed syllables: Ahwahaway [Amahami] (Ahwahharway), *cache (carsh,
cash), *camas (quarmash, quarmarsh, quawmash), Dakota (Darcotar),
*Kalapuya (Cal-lar-po-e-wah, Cal-lâh-po-e-wah), Mahaha (Mahharha),
*Nemaha (Nemarhar, Moha), *Omaha (Mahar, Maha), *Osage (Osarge, osoge),
pasheco (pashaquar), *pogamoggan (pog-gar-mag-gon, Poggamoggon),
Ponashita(Pâr-nâsh-te), *Sacagawea (Sâhcâhgâweâ, Sahcahgarweah), Shaha
(Sharha), yampa (yearpah), *exhaust (exorst, exost, exhost), *Multnomah
(Multnomah and Multnomar, Multnomah, Moltnomar), *Nodaway (nordaway,
Nodaway, Nardaway), *Pawnee (Parnee, Paunee, Pania), pembina (Pembenar),
Poncas (Porncases), shapat [Arikara ‘woman’] (Char-part), twánhayuksh
[Chinookan ‘enemies’] (Towarnehiooks).

In unstressed syllables: *camas (quarmarsh), Dakota (darcotar), Kansa
(kansar), *Wetesoon (WauteSoon, Weter Soon), Tacoutche-Tesse (Tarcouche
tesse), *Wakiacum (Warkiacum, Wackiacum, warkiacome), *Watlala
(Warclellar, Wahclellar, Wahclellah)

There are many other peculiarities to watch out for in using English
spellings to deduce the pronunciation of native words. L & C, for
instance, very often switch short i and short e in their writings, and
it's difficult to say just what pron. was intended in each case. (In
modern southern English, short e is often raised to short i and short i
is NOT lowered to short e, but in L & C, there's evidence that it works
both ways.) In short, in order to draw conclusions about native
pronunciations from early transcriptions in English, one has to know a
lot about 1.) the pronunciation of the journalist's dialect, and 2.) the
journalist's orthographic habits.

Alan