butterfly

[lcumberl at indiana.edu]

Now John's gone and mentioned 'raccoon' - the Lakota is wic^a or wic^iteglega,
which I recall Ella Deloria saying somewhere refers to the human-like appearance
of the raccoon's face, something like 'spotted man face'.

BTW - Asb for butterfly is kimaNmaNna, but other than the
diminutive/nominalizing -na, I won't venture an analysis.

Linda


Quoting Koontz John E <John.Koontz at colorado.edu>:

> On Wed, 29 Oct 2003, Rory M Larson wrote:
> > Bob wrote:
> > >  Kansa ... /nikkaphe/ 'comb' ...
> > And OP       /mikka'he/ 'comb'
> >
> > So here we have a case of PDh *ni => OP mi !
>
> Sharp eyes, Rory!  We'd have to check other cases to be sure which way the
> shift went.  Perhaps mi(N)- here is (or is intended for) 'woman'.
>
> Another example that I seem to recall, with apologies to everyone, is
> Quapaw mikka sabe (not sure I have the proper Quapaw forms) 'black
> person', literally 'black raccoon', recalling racist English usage.  I
> think in this case the opportunity to pun with nikka ~ mikka was a factor.
>
>
>