Word for 'prairie'?

[ROOD DAVID S]

It may not help, but Lak. uses the word oblaye 'flat place' for 'prairie'.

David

David S. Rood
Dept. of Linguistics
Univ. of Colorado
295 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
USA
rood at colorado.edu

On Wed, 28 Jan 2004, Rankin, Robert L wrote:

> I've had one of those layman's questions that is hard to answer.  We
> have an agricultural experimental station in Central Kansas called the
> "Konza Prairie" where they work on varieties of grasses.  They want to
> know how to say 'prairie' in Kaw.  I don't have much I can tell them.
> Does any of your work with Omaha, Ponca or Osage (or other languages)
> yield any insight.
>
> I made the point that if you were born, raised and lived all your life
> on the prairie, you might not actually have a name for it.  It's just
> "home".  Similarly, if the world were covered with water, we wouldn't
> have a word for 'ocean'.
>
> I also mentioned that there is a word in Quapaw and Kaw that refers
> generally to a flat land without trees, but that it is generally thought
> of as referring to 'flood plain' along a watercourse.  The word is
> /tteghe'/ in Quapaw and /cceghe'/ in Kansa.  I think La Flesche's Osage
> has the latter form with /c/ representing [ts] instead of [c^] in that
> language.  Has anyone else encountered a good term describing the broad
> expanse of grasslands we find in the prairie/plains?
>
> Bob
>
>