How!

[SHEA KATHLEEN DORETTE]

On Sat, 10 Apr 1999 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote:

> The most common Crow greeting is sho'ota 'how is it, how goes it' which
> contains the Crow equivalent of a wh-word.  An older greeting (still heard
> occasionally) is kahe'e.  Anyone seen anything like this?
>
> Randy
>

I'm told by the male Ponca elder that I work with that men say "ahau!" as
a greeting and that the women don't say anything!  (The two female Ponca
elders that I work with confirm this.)  He says that, if I want to, I can
say "hawe'" but that that's really Osage, the male counterpart being
"huwe'," and he sometimes greets me with this as I come in the door. (Some
Kaw women that I was talking with said that they say "hawe'" also, but, of
course, that could also be borrowed from Osage, irrespective of the fact
that there are no fluent Kaw speakers.) The Poncas don't seem to be big on
greetings. I'm told that often a visitor will just be greeted with
"dhathi'a" 'Did you (sg.) arrive?' or "dhathii'a" 'Did you (pl.) arrive?'

By the way, I'll try to comment on the Catawba stuff whenever I have a
chance to go back to reread my thesis and get in a "Catawba mindset."  I
would love to see Siebert's fieldnotes.  I always intended to make a trip
to meet him, but, unfortunately, he passed away before I had the
opportunity.  There's a lot that needs to be done and that could be done
with analyzing the morphology, so I'm glad to see that it's under
discussion.

Kathy