Sleeps and Winters

[Bruce Ingham]

Cree also has the pipoon word for winter and year as you would expect and it is also used for
 telling one's age, though I can't remember how

Bruce
Date sent:      	Sun, 18 Mar 2001 11:28:35 -0600
Send reply to:  	siouan at lists.colorado.edu
From:           	"Alan H. Hartley" <ahartley at d.umn.edu>
To:             	siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Subject:        	Re: Sleeps and Winters

> Does anyone know anything aobut the distribution in North America of
> the usage 'sleep(s)' in ennumerating days or 'winter(s)' in ennumerating
> years?

Ojibway has pipo:n 'winter, year', e.g. nisso pipo:n 'three years'
[Baraga _Dict. Otchipwe Lang._]

Blackfoot kaanistsísstoyiimihpa 'how old are you?' is literally (as
close as I can tell) 'how many winters have you?' (sstoyii 'be
cold/winter) [Frantz & Russell _Blackfoot Dict._]

Iñupiat has ukiuk 'winter, year' [Webster & Zibell _Iñupiat Eskimo
Dict._]

Chinook Jargon has cole 'winter, year', from Eng. cold, e.g., ikt cole
'one year' [Thomas _Chinook_].

In Plains sign language, the signs for 'winter' and 'year' are the same
[Clark _Indian Sign Language_].

Creek and Alabama apparently lack both the year=winter and day=sleep
equations. (My cursory look showed no example of the latter in any
language.)

Virginia Algonquian used cohonk (wild goose) as 'year'.

Alan
Dr. Bruce Ingham
Reader in Arabic Linguistic Studies
SOAS