Ioway baxoje, paoutet, etc.

[RLR]

The transcriptions of the Ioway self-identifier with apparent stop
consonants, e.g. "paoutet", etc. on some early French maps, should be
taken with a grain of salt.

1.  French had no "ch" sound, either phonemically or phonetically and
had not had since about the 12th century. They had no "dj" sound either.
So they had to write any such sound they heard in some other way. In the
modern language the spelling conventions tch and dj are most often used.
But in the 17th century there was no real standard.

2.  In Canadian dialects of French (and perhaps those in the areas of
France from which most colonials came) the stops /t/ and /d/ are
pronounced as affricates [ts] and [dz]. It may well be that a spelling
like "Paoutet" for the Ioway represented [paxotse] and was thus the
closest they could get to the ch that they heard from speakers. We would
need to check for such transcriptions by English speakers.

Bob