followup on 'banana'.

[R. Rankin]

> I think some of the other Dhegiha dialects may use
> something like /ttewadhe/ for 'banana', but I'm not
> sure.  It's mentioned in Gilmore's ethnobotany of the
> northern plains from 1919.

Since I was doing the above from memory, and my memory
is slipping these days, I thought I'd better check with
Gilmore for the straight dope.  The listed Omaha term
for 'banana' is "htedhawe" (I had the syllables
transposed).  There are cognates in:
Dakota:  Tewape
Omaha-Ponca:  Tethawe (Gilmore's spelling)
Winnebago:  Tsherop
(and a listed (unrelated) Pawnee term:  Tukawiu).

All the above are in Gilmore's spellings, which
disregard aspiration, etc.

The prototype would look something like *hte-ape or
*hte-ope, with different intervocalic glides developing
in different languages.

The term actually refers to the tubers of Nelumbo
lutea, the yellow lotus or water chinquapin, which was
cooked for food.  The Kaws call them 'yonkapins'
(spelling phonetically -- the word isn't in my
unabridged dictionary of English).  The rhizome
resembles a banana, thus the Omaha term after bananas
were introduced.

Oddly, the pawpaw is discussed in neither Gilmore or in
the more recent "Edible Wild Plants of the Prairie" by
KU's own Kelly Kindscher.

Bob