"scotty cooley"

[David Robertson]

One more note to add to our discussions about "scotty".

[Search our online archive for that word.  To refresh your memory: we were 
talking about this Jargon word, wondering about the source in (British) 
English: scotty? scatty? both?] 

Janet Leonard just defended her thesis in Linguistics here, 
titled "Formalising Stress in SENCOTEN".  That's the Saanich Salish 
language spoken near Victoria.

One of the SENCOTEN words she discusses is /skWati/ "crazy".  My capital W 
= the raised w that makes the k rounded.

That W makes this puzzle even more puzzling.  

If the word comes from English, does the W-pronunciation reflect a British 
sort of pronunciation?  I'm thinking of the "broad O" sound in "Shaw" 
or "law".  If this is so, why does Musqueam Salish, just a few miles away, 
have the pronunciation /skati/?  

I can't speak for Janet, but I seem to remember her saying this word didn't 
have any obvious Salish etymology.  

--Dave R



On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 12:22:53 -0500, David Robertson <ddr11 at COLUMBIA.EDU> 
wrote:

>A small note in addition: One of the more entertaining dictionaries ever
>printed, "British Self-Taught: With Comments in American" has an entry for
>what it labels as a slang adjective, 'scatty'.  It says this means
>approximately 'whacky' in American, and 'the closest Americans come to
>scatty is scatterbrained.'
>
>This book was written by Norman W. Schur, published in New York by
>Macmillan (1973).
>
>--Dave R
>
>
>On Sun, 27 Feb 2005 12:32:44 -0500, David Robertson <ddr11 at COLUMBIA.EDU>
>wrote:
>
>>Then there's the word "scatty".
>>
>>--Dave R
>
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