Sky and clouds

[RLR]

> In Mark Swetland's UmoNhoN Iye of Elizabeth Stabler, 'sky' is maNghe and 'cloud' is maNxpi (slightly re-spelled, of course).  So clouds are plural sky?

I don't think so, but I'm not certain. I suspect the -pi or -piya that
occurs on maNghe to make 'cloud' is just a derivational morpheme of some
kind -- not the pluralizer. The forms I'm familiar with have an umlauted
[u"] after -p-, not an i. [maxpu"ya]. I would have expected the Dakotan
form then to have -pu rather than -pi, but it doesn't seem to, so I'm a
little unsure of my ground here. In any event, nothing about this is
obvious to me.

JGT has Chiwere maNghu or maNghuwe (with [x] variants). That ought to
muddy the waters some. Haven't checked Winnebago.

Bob