Ponca

[Alan H. Hartley]

Rankin, Robert L wrote:

> Ordinarily, when I see <ar> in older orthographic rendering of Indian names,
> I just assume it represents [a], as in "Arkansas" or "Harjo", Creek for
> 'brave'.  This is almost always true in the South, where post-vocalic R
> didn't have a phonetic value, but it was true of various other R-less
> English dialects too (Boston, NYC, etc.). It's true that sometimes it might
> be a diacritic for length, but I don't think it has to be.

You're right: I imagine the -r was simply to insure a pron. as [a]
instead of [eI].

> As for "Ponca", there is really no regularly-occurring suffix or enclitic
> with a /dh/, the nearest thing to [r] in Ponca, that would explain the
> spellings.

It seems we're left with Chiwere as a source, assuming the L & C
spellings do represent a real [r].

Alan