nine as one missing

Fri Sep 13 10:44:11 UTC 2013

I was sent an email yesterday stemming from this conversation and my mention of an Otoe-Missouria tribal member giving me the term “nanye” for nine.  They mentioned Osage being along the lines of what was mentioned below (IE ten less one) and they asked me if Otoe-Missouria did that.  I told them that to my knowledge it did not but I would keep an eye out for it.  After all, “sanke” (the “regular” term for nine) as well as the new “nanye” don’t suggest anything to me about being “ten less one.”

But then I gave my two cents to the conversation about bl/br/gl/gr.  I mentioned an example using our current terms for eight and ten (grerabri and grebrą, respectively) and how William Hamilton in his An Ioway Grammar spelled these terms out as:

kræ-ra-ba-ne – eight

kræ-ba-na – ten

So I thought it would be interesting to add to the discussion that Hamilton didn’t “mash up” “ba-ne” into “bri” and “ba-na” into “brą” but instead kept them separate while at the same time not separating the “kr” at the beginning of each of those words.  But after writing that last night, a thought struck me about those two words are similar.  If I were to spell them out the way we would now in our modern orthography but still keep those syllables separate, they would be:

grerabani

grebaną

Those look pretty close.  Especially if you underline what is the same:

grerabani

grebaną

Now I am wondering if the words for eight and ten are related.  I don’t immediately see how “grerabri/grerabani” could say “eight less two” (maybe it says something else) but IF they are related, I would think that the number for nine would follow suit.  But it doesn’t…it jumps to “sanke.”  It was mentioned that “sanke” might be a loanword from Algonquin (and maybe vice versa).  Going on the TENTATIVE idea of “grerabri” and “grebrą” being somehow related, I would think that “sanke” would be the interloper into Otoe-Missouria (and by extension the other Siouan languages that use its cognates).  I never thought to consider those two being related.  Having “sanke” in there must have thrown off the pattern-searching algorithm in my brain J.

I’ll keep an eye out on this but in the meantime, are there any precedents for a number eight being “ten less two” or anything along those lines?  Or is it just a convention for nine?

Sky

From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] On Behalf Of Iren Hartmann
Sent: Friday, September 13, 2013 2:08 AM
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
Subject: nine as one missing

Hoocąk’s number nine is such a case, too. 

hižąkicųšgųnį - hižą (ONE) - ki- cųųšgųnį (be.without)

it’s really funny when students have to say 999 because it’s extra long... 
- Iren

  _____  

Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2013 11:00:23 -0700
From: pankihtamwa at EARTHLINK.NET
Subject: Re: Borrowings.
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu

That's not excessively long for "nine". In a lot of North American languages, "nine" is explicitly something like "one missing", "one less" or "almost ten", etc. So often it's a long construction. The Miami word for nine, ninkotimeneehki, appears to mean "one missing", and in its conservative pronunciation is six syllables long. "Nine" is usually the oddball of the first ten numbers, historically.

Dave

-----Original Message----- 
From: Rory Larson 
Sent: Sep 12, 2013 10:34 AM 
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu 
Subject: Re: Borrowings. 

Yes!  That sounds like a very nice find.  Keep it up with that speaker!  :)

The only thing that crosses my mind is Lakhota napciyuNka, Santee napciwaNka, meaning ‘nine’, which seems excessively long for a common number.  Perhaps it is related to the /napci/ part of those words somehow?

Best,

Rory

From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] On Behalf Of Greer, Jill
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2013 11:27 AM
To: SIOUAN at LISTSERV.UNL.EDU
Subject: Re: Borrowings.

Fascinating!  Keep up the good work, Sky!  

From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] On Behalf Of Campbell, Sky
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2013 9:37 AM
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
Subject: Re: Borrowings.

I couldn’t find the term for nine in my office but I did get to talk to the individual who gave it to me.  They gave me “nanye” (NAH-nyeh) which sounds very close to “nanyi” (sugar).  Does this term ring a bell to anyone?  They easily rattled off the numbers 1-10 exactly as I know them but instead of “sanke” they had “nanye.”  They didn’t miss a beat either.  I haven’t come across this term before.  I don’t know if it is some long lost word for nine, if it means nine in another language, or if it is an Otoe-ization of the English “nine.”  I’m not saying it is impossible, but I am skeptical of that last one.  Especially with the ease that they blew through the numbers.  It wasn’t a “let me look up and to the left while I try to remember and then use the careful enunciation of an individual largely unfamiliar with these words” sort of thing but a fast, practiced/familiar pronunciation.  I’m going to have to see about working with this individual more J.

Any thoughts?

Sky Campbell, B. A.

Language Director

Otoe-Missouria Tribe

580-723-4466 ext. 111

sky at omtribe.org

From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] On Behalf Of Sky Campbell
Sent: Monday, September 09, 2013 9:16 PM
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
Subject: Re: Borrowings.

About a year ago, I had a member of the Otoe-Missouria tribe tell me a word for nine that is different than the usual “sanke.”  I can’t remember what it was but I have it somewhere in my office.  I’ll try to find it tomorrow.  This talk about Siouan borrowing this term from Algonquian or vice versa has me very curious about that alternate term for nine.  Maybe it’ll shed some light here.

Sky

From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] On Behalf Of Rankin, Robert L.
Sent: Monday, September 9, 2013 8:59 PM
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
Subject: Re: Borrowings.

> As I mentioned before, this "shankka" number for "nine" is also around in Algonquian. The word can be reconstructed as Proto-Algonquian *ša·nka, but there are lots of problems: the etymon is completely missing from all of Eastern Algonquian, Miami-Illinois and Blackfoot; the Cree and Menominee forms don't have the proper reflexes for those languages and look like they're all borrowed from Ojibwe; and the Shawnee and Cheyenne forms inexplicably look like they derive from Proto-Algonquian *ča·nka, not *ša·nka. If it's a loan into Algonquian, it was borrowed early on, but after Algonquian had already started to separate out into dialects.

Missing from Miami/Illinois is troubling, since they seem to be the bunch most in contact with Kaw, Osage and Quapaw and probably all of Dhegiha.  

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