Where does the Jargon word “mali” for ‘a medal’ come from?
I’m so completely puzzled by this one, I’m just putting this question to the public:
Where does the Northern Dialect word of Chinuk Wawa, mali ‘medal’, come from?
I’d guess it to be from French, like almost all other religious words.
It is a religious word, according to JMR Le Jeune in his “Chinook Rudiments” of 1924, page 15.
An example from a 1904 issue of Kamloops Wawa is “Naika lolo ukuk mali kopa Rom, pus lipap mamuk blish…” (‘I brought those medals to Rome, for the pope to bless…’)
So this would be a Catholic medal with an image of an important saint.
Could mali be from French — as are most of the religious words? So, “Marie”, i.e. Mary?
It seems very doubtful that this mali could come from French médaille ‘medal’.
Bonus fact:
In fact, there’s also a non-religious word for ‘medal’ in Jargon, as in the prizes folks sometimes won for their accomplishments in Chinuk Pipa (‘Chinook Writing’): midal, from English.
Michif, that is the Cree-French blended language of some Métis communities, seems to use this; I see midael / midaal in several dictionaries, where it seems to mean the religious medals. The accompanying audio has the stress on the end of the word, though, as if it were French in origin.
Hi Dave, Apropos very little of the above, I note you’ve used the CJ word “lolo”, which I have seen elsewhere, but am interested to learn from you its meaning and usage. Thanks, J.
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Hi Judy, “lolo” is a verb (lúlu in Grand Ronde spelling) meaning ‘carry, take along, bring’. Not to be confused with the G.R. word lúʔluʔ ‘accumulate(d), pile(d) up; round’.
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Thanks Dave! It fits well with a theory I’m working on!
Cheers!
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I think your derivation from French ‘Marie’ seems most likely. Certainly the Virgin Mary would have been a common image on such medals.
Possibly somewhat relevant?? — I’ve also encountered an instance of, I guess you could say, “Mary-creep” in Ojibwe. An origin myth given by a Wisconsin traditionalist to the German traveler Johann Kohl in 1855 was actually heavily influenced by the Garden of Eden story, despite his rejection of Christianity; it involved the first man and woman originally living in a garden before being tricked by a tempter into surrendering their immortality by eating the fruit of a forbidden tree. The first man’s name is not given, but the first woman’s is not some version of “Eve,” but instead Maanii, the Ojibwe form of “Marie.”
I’m not sure about the Michif word, but suspect it might be an English borrowing that was then Frenchified by changing the vowels to their Métis French equivalents. The final stress could be another aspect of this (Richard Rhodes notes that “cowboy” > Michif /kawbój/) or just be due to a recent development in which the phonology of Michif — at least in Manitoba — has merged significantly, so the same vowel system, etc. is found in words from all sources. In this newer Michif, basically all words, whether from French or Cree, carry final stress (either primary or secondary), so it wouldn’t be surprising if the same happened to older English loans. (Though I would suspect many of the ad hoc English loans which are now freely used (because all Michif speakers are English-dominant) retain their original English pronunciation, or close to it. But I don’t know.)
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