Ponca-Pawnee Name Inquiry

[Rory M Larson]

> I can't add much to what's already been said, except that I think the
letter X really has to be read as [ks].  Siouan *ks clusters all reduce to
[s] or [ss] in Dhegiha languages.  And it's highly unlikely that Julius
Meyer would have known to use X for a fricative sound.  If he knew Yiddish,
Polish or Czech, he might have used CH, but not X.

Yeah, that's probably true, and would favor Justin's suggestion of
[something]-ska, rather than [something]-akHa', supposing it is from Ponca.
There's also the o in Box, which might suggest [oN] rather than [a].
Rolling Box ka around in my head using those readings sounds more like
ppoN'kka-ska than anything else.  There's a fairly common female name
PoN'ka-soN, but I'm not seeing a PoN'ka-ska anywhere in the Fletcher & La
Flesche name lists.

The Nebraska State Historical Society website on Julius Meyer says that he
is reputed to have spoken six *Indian* languages, not just six languages.
He was born in Prussia in 1839, came to Omaha in 1867, developed
acquainances with Plains Indians, and served as an interpreter for General
George Crook.  On other sites, there are a couple of pictures of his
tobacco store from 1878, one with an awning printed in giant letters:
Julius Meyer: Indian Interpreter.  (A couple of Jewish-partisan blog sites
from a few years ago claim that he came to Omaha in 1864 at the age of 13
or 14.)  There are photos of him in Indian garb with some mainly Sioux
delegations from the 1870s before that.  He was the local specialist in
Chinese and Japanese matters, as well as Indians.  He seems to have started
the Omaha Chess Club in 1879, and there is a picture of three Indians from
1883 that he apparently took.  Oddly, I can't seem to find a date for his
death.

Although I think Bob is probably right about x being read as [ks], I would
like to ask if anyone knows where the x convention for the velar fricative
originated.  Dorsey used it for the voiced or muted phoneme, and Fletcher
and La Flesche collapsed both into x.  Is this coming from an education in
Greek?  What about Russian?  Doesn't it use an X for the velar fricative?
(Sorry, I'm rusty on Cyrillic!)  And what is known about Dorsey's
introductory education in OP?  Did he have any contact with Meyer?

Rory
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/siouan/attachments/20070823/ae464608/attachment.htm>