INDIAN CALENDARS Re: Saying dates. Payday?

[Dave Robertson]

[I'll answer F's question first, then move to a new subject below. --  Dave]

Hi, Francisc,  

The shorthand letter <c> usually represents the sound [ts].

So it's sort of parallel to the letter <c> in Polish, Czech, Croatian, 
Albanian, etc.  

As you know, some European languages write this same [ts] sound with the 
letter <z>.  German does this, so does Italian, sort of.  

Of course <z> also stands for the voiced [z] sound as in English, French, 
Romanian...

Because of these alternations back in their native Europe (maybe especially 
in pronunciation of Latin?) Catholic missionaries in western North America 
sometimes used just one letter to represent both [ts] and [z].  

That's the situation with the shorthand letter I transcribed as <c>.  It's 
got two different sounds.  The word <buc> = "boots".

But the word <dic> = "days".  

Notice how the English plural was borrowed into local Jargon for expressing 
dates.  This might mean that speakers were saying something like "9 DAYS 
into the month of January".  

(The word <dic> seems to have been used only in dates; otherwise we find 
the usual Jargon word <son> for "day".  Note that dates involve counting, 
and numbers were already very often expressed by English loans in the 
shorthand letters.  Also, dates involve month names, which are all English 
loans in these letters.  Since dates were such an English-rich environment, 
the use of <dic> might be seen as more appropriate than <son>.)  

I hadn't thought of this before, but if true it would match with the way 
the "Indian Calendars" published in "Kamloops Wawa" worked.  These 
calendars were sets of mostly stick-like symbols, seven per week, with 
special symbols for Sundays and holidays.  

I would think that this style of calendar was a conscious accomodation of 
traditional ways of marking time, which are well documented in the 
literature as well as being reported by Father Le Jeune as an eyewitness.  
(People would do things like make one knot per day in a cord, or remove one 
stick per day from a bundle, to keep track of long time spans.)  

Readers of "Kamloops Wawa" definitely did use the Indian Calendars.  I've 
made a point of photocopying these whenever I find them in archives with 
the subscriber's pencil marks crossing off the individual days.  

So, thanks for your question, and for stimulating these thoughts about the 
cultural clues that may be present in the Chinook letters.

--Dave R.


On Thu, 19 Apr 2007 02:18:49 -0700, Francisc Czobor <fericzobor at YAHOO.COM> 
wrote:

>I have a question too:
>  How is to be read the word "dic" (day) ?
>
>  Francisc  

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