Miyoglasin

[David Kaufman]

I would not go so far as the History Channel does in proclaiming northern
Georgia to have been a Maya colony, but I still believe that the maritime
trade hypothesis has some merit, whether this particular 'tamaha' word has
any relation to Totonac or not.  A Mexican archaeologist recently claims to
have discovered the remains of a boat pier in the neighborhood of El Tajin
that she believes was a Gulf trading port.  No discovery of any boats yet
that I know of, and especially not in the area of Mobile Bay, but I think
such archaeological evidence helps raise the ante in a discussion of Gulf
trade and contact.  Stay tuned....

David Kaufman, Ph.C. Linguistic Anthropology
University of Kansas
Director, Kaw Nation Language Program


On Sat, Oct 5, 2013 at 1:16 PM, Rankin, Robert L. <rankin at ku.edu> wrote:

>  Well, the fact that this is essentially the hypothesis of the History
> Channel guys, Richard Thornton and Scott Wolter, who also claim to have
> "discovered" Mayan temples in North Georgia, doesn't make the theory more
> attractive.  When legit archaeologists have dug up an identifiably
> Totonacan boat in the SE U.S., I'll take it more seriously.
>
> I'd be interested to hear from Algonquianists whether the Algonquian term
> is reconstructible in that family.  If so, it would be a much more likely
> source for the Siouan and Muskogean terms.  BTW, the Choctaw speakers I
> worked with had "tomaha" rather than "tamaha", but I don't know how
> widespread that is.
>
> Creek "talwa" is not involved in the group.  It is a native term derived
> from the root "tal-" 'arrange, put, place, group' and appears to have good
> cognates across Muskogean.
>
> Bob
>  ------------------------------
> *From:* Siouan Linguistics [SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] on behalf of David
> Kaufman [dvkanth2010 at GMAIL.COM]
> *Sent:* Saturday, October 05, 2013 11:08 AM
> *To:* SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
> *Subject:* Re: Miyoglasin
>
>   I have toyed with the idea that Choctaw-Chickasaw and Mobilian Jargon
> tamaha 'town' and Creek talwa 'town' could have been borrowed from Totonac
> tamawan, which literally means 'place of buying' and 'plaza' in Totonacan.
> Totonac is the central coastal Mexican language that may have been spoken
> in and around El Tajin on the Gulf coast of Mexico, perhaps after migrating
> from Teotihuacan ca. 800 CE.  This would assume of course that the Totonacs
> were doing maritime trading across the Gulf over into Mobile Bay where the
> word could have entered Muskogean then possibly was copied into Siouan and
> some Algonquian languages from there.  Maybe a long shot, but given certain
> other lexical resemblances between Totonac, Mayan, and Muskogean not
> necessarily out of the question.
>
>  Dave
>
>  David Kaufman, Ph.C. Linguistic Anthropology
> University of Kansas
>  Director, Kaw Nation Language Program
>
>
> On Sat, Oct 5, 2013 at 10:20 AM, shokooh Ingham <shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk>wrote:
>
>>  Cree Otenaw 'town' an Lakota Othunwahe is also an interesting
>> resemblance.
>>  Bruce
>>
>>   ------------------------------
>> *From:* "Rankin, Robert L." <rankin at KU.EDU>
>> *To:* SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
>> *Sent:* Tuesday, 10 September 2013, 2:01
>> *Subject:* Re: Miyoglasin
>>
>>  Jan,
>>
>> Thanks for the expert commentary and additional examples.
>>
>> *O**thúŋwahe* ‘town’ is another one of those *wanderwoerter* that has
>> similar forms in Dakotan, Dhegiha, and Biloxi as well as Choctaw and
>> Chickasaw.  I'm surprised it doesn't seem to be in Chiwere or Hochunk.  I
>> think it turns up in Virginia in the tribal name *Tomahitan*, which
>> would mean 'big town' also in Biloxi.  It's not out of the question that
>> the word is native Siouan, but the distribution and sound correspondences
>> don't make me feel good.  :-)
>>
>> Bob
>>   ------------------------------
>> *From:* Siouan Linguistics [SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] on behalf of Jan
>> Ullrich [jfu at LAKHOTA.ORG]
>> *Sent:* Monday, September 09, 2013 2:25 PM
>> *To:* SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
>> *Subject:* Re: Miyoglasin
>>
>>   Dear all:
>>
>> I think that there are more loan words in traditional Lakota than one may
>> think. Here are some examples:
>>
>> aspéla (from aspirin)
>> bébela ‘baby’ from French
>> khukhúše ‘pig’ from French
>> kuŋkúŋla  - ‘cucumber’
>> khamíte ‘committee’
>> pusíla – ‘cat’
>> spakéli ‘spaghetti’
>>
>> I recorded these word from fluent traditional speakers, although it is
>> true that not all of them are recognized across the community. Such is the
>> case of spakéli, aspéla and pusíla, but the other ones are fully
>> standardized lexical items. And I am quite sure that this is not the full
>> list.
>>
>> I am intrigued by Bob’s comment that othúŋwahe ‘town’ might be borrowing
>> as well. I recall reading somewhere (perhaps in one of John Koontz’s
>> materials, but I could be wrong) that the word itázipa ‘bow’ is a loan as
>> well.
>>
>> Also, many speakers told me how their monolingual Lakota speaking
>> grandparents Lakotized the children’s English names because they couldn’t
>> pronounce them. For example Delores was called “Čelowiŋ”, Imogene was
>> “Imočila” etc. I have documented dozens of these. I think that this could
>> be another indication that Lakota speakers were quite open to borrowing
>> words from other languages. Contemporary speakers are usually very
>> reluctant to do so, but I think this might have been different when the
>> majority of speakers were still monolingual.  I wouldn’t be at all
>> surprised if there were lots of loans from other tribes, especially on
>> fauna and flora.
>>
>> As for “mirror” I have always been skeptical about the “mirror glass”
>> etymology because the analyses that involves mní ‘water’ and a possessive
>> or reflexive of ókas’iŋ ‘to peer into’ seem quite convincing and is
>> consistent across dialects. But again, I can be wrong and it wouldn’t be
>> for the first time.
>>
>> Jan
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  *From:* Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] *On Behalf
>> Of *De Reuse, Willem
>> *Sent:* Monday, September 09, 2013 1:58 AM
>> *To:* SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
>> *Subject:* Re: Miyoglasin
>>
>>  Thanks for the very detailed miyoglas'in discussion, Rory.  I agree,
>> and I like the expression 'chiming calque'.
>>
>> Willem
>>  ------------------------------
>>  *From:* Siouan Linguistics [SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] on behalf of Rory
>> Larson [rlarson1 at UNL.EDU]
>> *Sent:* Sunday, September 08, 2013 6:51 PM
>> *To:* SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
>> *Subject:* Re: Miyoglasin
>>
>> Ø  It is not unlikely that this was influenced by "mirrorglass".  But it
>> has a good Lakota etymology (see the New Lakota Dictionary), so this is NOT
>> a loan from English.  (Coincidences happen.   My favorite is [elkar] which
>> means 'each other' in Dutch and in Basque.)
>>
>> Ø I have to admit that I’m very skeptical of 5 syllable long
>> “coincidences”, so it seems to me more likely that ‘mirror’ is a loanword
>> from either French or English that may have been reanalyzed in terms of the
>> vertitive given in the new dictionary.
>>
>>
>> The word miyoglasin, together with several variants of the term, appears
>> in both Williamson and Riggs:
>>
>> Riggs:
>>
>>                 mi-yó-gla-siŋ, n. T. a mirror, looking glass.  See
>> mioglasiŋ.
>>
>>                 mí-o-gla-siŋ, n. T. a mirror.  See mniohdasiŋ.
>>
>>                 mni-yó-hda-siŋ, n.  a looking-glass; window glass.  See
>> mioglasiŋ.
>>
>> Williamson:
>>
>>                 mirror, n.  Ihdiyomdasiŋ.  Y.  Mniokdasiŋ.  T.
>> Miyoglasiŋ.
>>
>> Riggs:
>>
>> i-hdí-yo-mda-siŋ, n.  a looking-glass, mirror.  T., miyoglasiŋ.  See
>> aokasiŋ and okasiŋ.
>>
>> a-ó-ka-siŋ,  v.a.  to look into, peep into—aowakasiŋ, aoyakasiŋ,
>> aouŋkasiŋpi.
>>
>>                 ó-ka-siŋ,  v.  to look into.  See aokasiŋ, kas’iŋ, and
>> okakiŋ.
>>
>>                 ka-s’íŋ, adv.  appearing, in sight.  See aokasiŋ and
>> okasiŋ.
>>
>> The term is pretty clearly based on the verb ókas(‘)iŋ, ‘to look into’.
>> In its vertitive form óglasiŋ, it should mean ‘to look into at oneself’,
>> which makes very good sense for the meaning of ‘mirror’.  The Yankton and
>> one of the Santee forms suggest that the word originally began with the
>> term m(i)ni, ‘water’, rather than the undefined element /mi/.  The other
>> Santee form shows that ‘oil’, ihdi, could be substituted for ‘water’ to get
>> the same sense (though in this case, they are apparently using a different
>> instrumental prefix—not sure why).  Most likely, native people were
>> perfectly familiar with the concept of looking into a pool of clear, still
>> liquid to see their own faces long before European mirrors ever appeared.
>>
>> These dictionaries were developed in the 19th century, and the suite of
>> terms taken together shows the approximate etymology without having to
>> assume a recent reanalysis.  Only the Teton/Lakhota form shows any notable
>> similarity to “mirrorglass”, and then only because that dialect happens to
>> use the cluster /gl/ where other dialects use /hd/ or /kd/.
>>
>> This almost certainly is not a simple loanword from French or English.
>> French seems to have both “miroir” and “glace” as words for ‘mirror’, where
>> English has “mirror” and “looking-glass”.  But was a term like
>> “mirrorglass” actually in circulation in either language in the 18th or
>> 19th centuries?  I don’t find it in my English dictionary, or in the
>> French dictionary either.  If we can document that this compound was
>> commonly used a couple of centuries ago, then perhaps the Lakhota form was
>> influenced by it to the extent of changing initial mni- mi-.  Otherwise, I
>> think the “coincidence” here may actually illustrate the process of
>> creating a chiming calque, in this case, from Lakhota into English.
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Rory
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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