A great Polymath

[Clive Bloomfield]

Dear Bruce, Toniktuka kwo? Nis eya "Hokahe, tanyan yahi yelo" kin he  
emayakiye kin he un wopila tanka eciciye lo! Thank you also for all  
of your indispensible contributions to Lakota scholarship, and also  
for that study of Najdi Arabic. I "did" a year of Classical Arabic  
back in 1975, under the great polymath/philologist Reader/Doctor ALAN  
TRELOAR, at the Uni. of New England, Armidale, N.S.W., Australia.  
[ Or perhaps that should have read: "Class. Arabic" DID (for)  
me! :)] .That year, I recall that we completed all the grammar &  
exercises in Heywood & Nahmad's Grammar of Classical Arabic, and were  
just beginning to read the Qur'anic texts, and texts from Ibn  
Battuta's Travels at the end of that book. He was absolutely rigorous  
in his high standards. Do you know of him? I believe he is still  
teaching, at a very venerable age : I hope so - a gentleman & scholar  
of the old school :). He had been in Military Intelligence working on  
codes during WWII, and told me once that he had been sent to Iceland  
as official interpreter on some wartime expedition, or other.  
Apparently his profound scholarly mastery of Old Norse (Pre-war  
"Oxbridge"-style!), enabled him to "bone up" on modern spoken  
Íslendzka in very short order (a few months, I believe, or maybe it  
was a matter of weeks)! Don't know if he ever studied Siouan  
languages, but would not be in the least surprised if he had followed  
in the footsteps of the prodigious Hans Conon von der Gabelentz in  
meticulously mastering  "Dakota Sprache", he was that sort of all- 
rounder. To my certain knowledge, at that time, he was teaching at  
tertiary level, Ancient Greek & Latin, Sanskrit, Classical Chinese,  
Biblical Hebrew, Classical Arabic, Anglo-Saxon, Old High German, and  
had reading knowledge of about 50 others, including ALL Indo-Eur.  
European languages.  Truly, "They were giants in those days!". Thanks  
again for welcoming me so warmly, and best wishes to all members  
here!, Clive.
On 23/06/2006, at 11:09 PM, shokooh Ingham wrote:

> Dear Clive
> Nice to find another Lakota enthusiast.  I had better
> reply before anyone else does.  The word you mentioned
> Itooicacu which i have in the dictionary I have from
> Buechel, but I must say that I almost didn't include
> it in the dictionary.  Initially when I strted
> compiling the dictionary, I only put a word in If I
> could be sure of its derivation.  Later however I
> began to think that in a dictionary "the more the
> merrier", also who was I to judge if a word was
> genuine or not.  So it went in, but I was never very
> confident about it and since then I have never managed
> to elicit it from anyone as a word for camera.  The
> word I did get was iteicu, the derivation of wich is
> plain.  Possibly the first word should be iteoicacu or
> iteoicu.  I really am not sure.  It may as you say be
> a legendary self perpetuating typo.   Anyway welcome
> to the club
>
> Bruce
> --- Clive Bloomfield <cbloom at ozemail.com.au> wrote:
>
>> Hello folks, This is my first posting here, so I am
>> feeling a little
>> diffident. For the past three years now, I have
>> been, amongst other
>> pursuits, an Australian self-taught (hélas!) student
>> of Lakotaiyapi,
>> (mostly using S.R. Riggs's Dakota Grammar (1893);
>> E.C. Deloria's
>> Dakota Texts (1932); Boas & Deloria (1939); Fr. E.
>> Buchel's Grammar
>> of Teton Lakota (1939); Prof. B. Ingham's (Lincom
>> Europa) "Lakota"
>> monograph of 2003, and whatever other authoritative
>> sources from
>> IJAL, etc, I can lay my hands on.)  At times one
>> does feel like the
>> proverbial client who had engaged himself for a
>> lawyer! :) I've been
>> a fascinated member of this list since February, and
>> have been
>> content to be still, and read & learn from the
>> experts. But on this
>> occasion I fear, curiosity has momentarily
>> emboldened me! :( I am
>> greatly perplexed about the precise etymology, (if
>> known) of the
>> Lakota word for "camera", given by Professor Ingham
>> in his E.-L.
>> Dict. (2001) as : "itooicacu", and by
>> Buechel-Manhart (2002) as both
>> "itooicacu" & "itocicacu" [DAR applies]. I am not
>> concerned about
>> variants here, but I am unspeakably curious about
>> this words
>> derivation : how to account for both "o's" in the
>> first version of
>> the word? (one being a locative affix, one
>> presumes); where does the
>> first "c" in that second version hail from?   I
>> understand that the
>> "e" of "ite" [face] has been elided before the first
>> "-o-", as
>> in ,for instance, "itowapi<iteowapi" [picture;
>> photograph; portrait].
>> Is the verbal root "icu" to take", I wonder? I
>> suspect not. But if it
>> is so, how to account for "-ica-"? Might there
>> perhaps be some degree
>> of "ikceya-woglakapi" contraction happening here?
>> Could that "-ica-"
>> conceivably be "-wica-"? I will spare you any more
>> of my own
>> speculations, but I would dearly appreciate any
>> etymologically
>> deconstructive illumination of this puzzling word,
>> from any scholar
>> or knowledgable person who can spare the time! :-).
>> Thank you for
>> allowing me to participate!  Toksa ake mitakuyepi,
>> Clive Bloomfield
>> of Melbourne,
>> Australia.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>        P.S. Some
>> years ago I completed formal tertiary studies of
>> Ancient Greek &
>> Latin languages & literatures. I also have a
>> reasonable (working
>> reading/writing) knowledge of Finnish, Hungarian &
>> Modern Turkish,
>> and being part of the Irish diaspora, have acquired
>> sufficient
>> Gaeilge over the years to speak the language to some
>> degree, read
>> fluently, and teach it passably. Hope that does not
>> seem too much
>> like "bravado" or "puffery" - I just felt that it
>> was germane to a
>> self-intro. to professional linguists & scholars. I
>> am very aware of
>> that proverb on self-praise! You should see the list
>> of languages of
>> which I am a total ignoremus! :-))  P.P.S. Might
>> "itocicacu" be one
>> of those legendary long-perpetuated typos [ first
>> "c" for poorly
>> written "o"??]
>>
>
>
>
> 		
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