How! (was Re: Catawba 'go' & 'come')

[Koontz John E]

> BARudes:
> > The verb hau- is intriguing for it bears an uncanny resemblence to the
> > widespread particle hao?, h'au? (Seneca and Tuscarora forms, respectively)
> > which variously means o.k., already, hello, come on in, welcome in languages
> > throughout the east and into the plains.  It might be a predication of that
> > particle.

I've always thought this was an interesting form.  Because it is so
widespread (though I have no idea precisely how widespread), I've tended
to suspect that it might be pre-Contact.  Greetings in h-back vowel are
certainly fairly common in Europe, too, perhaps without inheritance,
though I've not seen anything on the subject.  However, hau certainly also
looks like an English loan, i.e., from "How (do you do)?"  I imagine it
might be possible to document the progress of the term, it it is a loan,
though I don't know of any relevant comments, and it might be difficult to
get past misconceptions on the part of the recordists.  By the way, add
Hopi to the list of languages with hau.