Rory's Mysterious Omaha-Ponca Fragment

[Koontz John E]

On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 Rgraczyk at aol.com wrote:
> An interesting Crow money term that I have heard is
>
>     tennise'ete 'ten cents'

There are a number of such forms in Miner's Winnebago Field Lexicon.  It's
hard to know if they are nonce forms, regular loans, or some sort of code
switching.  My favorite has always been koinstaac^.  Not a money term
though it came up this time in that context this time.

I suspect use of English coinage terms and counting in OP is something on
the order of code-switching, but the forms were always embedded in Omaha
speech when I heard them.  I imagine this sort of thing works up to loans
in the long run, and I could see something like one of the Japanese or
Algonquian situations arising (or the English one vis-a-vis French and
Classical forms).

In Omaha things handled similarly to numbers, money, dates and times were
many placenames and English personal names.  I don't know if this was
everything.  Also, because my fluency in Omaha is near nil, I would have
missed cases where these things were happening in Omaha.  Obviously Omaha
has equivalents for everything.  These are all things that are the crack
between Omaha and English, and might tend to arise mostly in English
contexts (like times and dates and money) or be relevant primarily in
English ways (like English personal names).  So, I'd predict that numbers
arising in Omaha ways - how many people, days passed, etc. - would come
out in Omaha, but in connection with dates, money, and English-context
computations, in English.  Sadly I lacked the foresight or skill to look
into this at the time!

In regard to placenames I noticed mainly that many standard placenames
with primarily an Omaha circulation were in English without any known (or
readily offered) Omaha equivalent.  I think also that a number of towns
with standard Omaha versions tended to come up in English form, like
Decatur, Walthill, Rosalie, Tecamah, Omaha, Lincoln, Sioux City, etc.
Again, I would have missed any Omaha occurrences that weren't specifically
directed at me.

In regard to personal names I have since realized that a number of
French-origin personal names in many cases are naturalized and perceived
as Omaha words.  That is, they are now Omaha words.  This explains, for
example, the assertion that Rosalie is the English version of the native
Omaha name Thuzathi.  I think it also explains Mary Clay (now deceased)
being addressed as Me(e)dhi, with a specifically Omaha pronunciation.  I
thought this was English influence, but now I rather wonder if this wasn't
considered to be her Omaha name, or at least one of her Omaha names.

This might also explain the difficulty of locating "Omaha" names for many
of the LaFlesche family.  In many cases their Omaha names might be Omaha
versions of the French names that underlie their English names.