Le Sanglais

[R. Rankin]

> > Years ago I asked James H. Howard about these
terms and he said the term was from Gaelic,
learned from the British soldiers during the
French and Indian
wars through the War of 1812.

> It sounds as if he must have supposed the term
to be related to
> "sassenach," (sp?)  which doesn't seem to be in
my Webster's desk
> dictionary.  I think it is a Gaelic plural
(maybe a pejorative?) of
> "Saxon," i.e., Englishman, popularized in
English in Scottish historical
> fiction.

My Random House has Scots Galic Sassunach and
Irish Gaelic Sassanach with the meaning John gives
above.

> The usual view today is that it is ultimately
from French les anglais.
> The le- of les is lost, but the s from it,
attached to anglais by liaison,
> is retained, yielding 's anglais, or sangle, as
it were.  Of course, the
> attested forms look like it was actually sangla,
and I don't know if this
> change occurs in Algonquian or not.  I think so,
because my undestanding
> is that during the period that anglais was
written anglois the oi wasn't
> pronounced wa, i.e., it was sangle, not
*sanglwa.

Probably [e:] or [we] by then, but written <oi> .

But watch out!  I ran across a "SASNAK" bar and
grill in north Topeka, KS and was sure I'd
happened onto a local attestation of "les anglais"
in some slightly different phonetic incarnation.
I was about to go in and inquire of the manager
how they had come upon the name when I suddenly
realized what it was when spelled backwards.

Sure burst my etymological bubble that day.

Bob