húyhuy ‘trade’ as a Canadian French word
Huyhuy, a film by Sky Hopinka (image credit: Youtube)
A word you wouldn’t think of as French…George Gibbs 1863:5 cites a personal communication from Alexander Caulfield Anderson (1814-1884) as his authority:
Huy-huy, n[oun], v[erb]. Canadian French, HUI-HUI. A bargain or exchange; to barter or trade. Ex. Huyhuy la sille, change the saddle; huyhuy tumtum, to change one’s mind. Mr. Anderson says this is a cant word of the Canadians, signifying a hasty exchange. Its origin has been suggested in oui oui, yes yes.
Anderson had worked at Fort Vancouver in 1832 and again in 1840 and 1851-1854, and ran Fort Nisqually in 1840-1841, as well as spending years on BC’s coast and in (New) Caledonia (its interior).
He’s credited with one published Chinook Jargon dictionary, although he himself disclaimed its authorship.
In any event, he can be relied on as someone well acquainted with CJ and with Canadian fur-trade French.
Huyhuy is not necessarily known from written documentation of Canadian French.
But then again, neither is another Jargon word of reduplicated form and mysterious etymology, bibi. Gibbs (1863:1) thinks this “word used toward children”, which he writes as < bé-be>, is “probably a repetition of the first syllable of BAISER”.
And we hadn’t realized Jargon lakamín for ‘soup, stew, dumpling(s)’ is from Canadian French la gamine ‘coarse (flour)’ until just a few weeks ago.
It’s good to keep in mind how typical illiteracy was among the French-speaking employees in the fur trade; they kept almost no diaries.
Their French was noted down by others only in sporadic fragments, much less often than Indigenous words were. I imagine the feeling was “we already have dictionaries of French”–!
It’s a funny thing, that. We’ve wound up with better materials to argue for an Indigenous source of huyhuy:
The Grand Ronde dictionary of 2012 notes a good Nuuchahnulth (“NCN”, Vancouver Island) source for it, ḥaʔuyi. I’d point out, however, that (A) we don’t know of that in a reduplicated form in NCN dictionaries and (b) I’m not finding it (yet) in Nootka Jargon word lists, which was the way the NCN words got into very early Chinuk Wawa.
There’s also a case to be made for a Southwest Washington Salish origin. Cowlitz and Upper Chehalis have xʷíy(‘)xʷiy(‘) ‘stingy; won’t share’. I can just about imagine that being a source of huyhuy as well.
(I thought I had replied to this, but perhaps I forgot to send it, or to fill in my details.)
Huyhuy: The context of use and the initial h make it hard for me to think that this word could be
from “oui oui”.
“Bébe, bibi” : In my family we have always used “un bi” for a peck on the cheek, as with a child or a family member: “Fais-moi un bi” ‘Give me a kiss’. To me, “un baiser” belongs to a higher register. I am not sure where our “bi” came from, perhaps as a shorter form of “un bisou”, itself a (possibly Southern) derivative of “une bise”, a common word in Northern French: “Fais-moi la bise” ‘Give me a kiss’.
I’m glad you commented on the “H” — I wanted to throw in a mention that we have at least one other Canadian French word recorded in good early-creole Jargon, as seen in “Manuscript 195” published by George Lang in his book “Making Wawa”: < tapahote > ‘shame!’, evidently from t’a pas honte ‘you have no shame’.
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I am also skeptical that huyhuy came from French, both because of the aitches /h/, and because of the weak attestation. I favour the etymology from Nuuchahnulth ḥaʔuyi, ḥaʔuyii, which has exactly the right meaning. The deformation of the word to huyhuy can be explained as English speakers having trouble with the glottal stop /ʔ/. They could tell that the word was polysyllabic, but could not conceive of /ʔ/ as a language sound, hence huyhuy. Compare the Nuuchahnulth name ƛaʔuukʷiʔatḥ, which got Anglicized as Clayuquot – that is, /ʔ/ became /y/.
Hi Adam,
I agree, the documentation for a Canadian French etymology is lacking, though that seems to occur a lot, because Can Fr folk speech was not commonly written.
While we’re on the subject, I’ve been reading quite a bit about Can Fr, and I see that at least in Acadian varieties, the /ž/ conventionally written as < j > or < g > is pronounced /h/ or /x/. However, I doubt CW húyhuy could be traced to a French *jouis-jouis! Its meaning is not relevant (‘enjoy-enjoy!’), and there weren’t tons of Acadians in the PNW.
Alexander Caulfield Anderson was ultra-knowledgeable about the Can Fr-speaking overland fur trade, from personal experience. And a respectable scholar like Gibbs wouldn’t attribute an idea to ACA without permission. (Unlike the disreputable party who published a Chinuk Wawa dictionary under ACA’s byline, which ACA said was a mistake-ridden piece of junk.) So I wonder if Anderson’s conviction that húyhuy is French maybe decides the issue for us. Maybe it really did start as “oui-oui”, and then was Jargon-ized with an initial /h/, as happened with Chinookan-derived “(h)áyáq” and Nuučaan’uɬ-derived “háyásh”.
Also this: we infer that Can Fr as spoken around Fort Vancouver did contain the phoneme /h/, from evidence such as John Ball, ms. 195 (published in George Lang’s book “Making Wawa”), with its < tapahote > ‘shame!’ from Fr “t’as pas honte”.
A complex swirl of languages in contact, that’s Chinuk Wawa’s history!
Dave R.
lolol I see that I’m repeating myself, answering Adam with info that I’d already shared above. aná! 😀