More evidence of Métis French in BC? “Ember Days”

Readers of the old Chinook Jargon newspaper, “Kamloops Wawa” often saw the word likatrta in the calendar section.

Likatrta comes from French les quatre temps, so it’s the normal, expected phonetic spelling in the “Chinuk Pipa” shorthand alphabet. (In Chinook Jargon, French nasalized vowels like the “-emps” routinely change to oral vowels like the “-a” that we see here.)

Image credit: Wikipedia

You might think of les quatre temps as meaning ‘the 4 seasons’ or ‘the 4 times (of the year)’. In English the term is “ember-days”, and Etymonline explains things wonderfully, as usual:

Old English Ymbrendaeg, Ymbren, 12 days of the year (divided into four seasonal periods, hence Medieval Latin name quatuor tempora) set aside by the Church for fasting and prayers, from Old English ymbren “recurring,” corruption of ymbryne “a circuit, revolution, course, anniversary,” literally “a running around,” from ymb “round” (from Proto-Germanic umbi, from PIE root *ambhi– “around”) + ryne “course, running” (from PIE root *rei– “to run, flow”). Perhaps influenced by a corruption of the Latin name (compare German quatember, Danish tamper-dage). The Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after the first Sunday in Lent, Whit-Sunday, Sept. 14, and Dec. 13, set aside for prayer and fasting.

What I’m fascinated with is how, twice, “Kamloops Wawa” instead uses a spelling likatta. (With no “r”.) See those occurrences here:

<21> Wi. <I> Sin Matiyu lisapot = likatta;
’21st  We.        St Matthew, apostle; ember-day‘

<22> Tr. <I> Sin Lin pap pi martir
’22    Thur.      St Linus, pope & martyr’

<23> Fr. <I> Likatta = Sin Toma di Vilanova
’23     Fr.         Ember-day; St Thomas di Villanova’

— Kamloops Wawa #44 (Sept. 18, 1892), page 45

Considering that the other spelling, likatrta, is so frequent (found dozens of times in “K.W.”), and that the rarer likatta is not a one-off but is repeated as if on purpose within issue 44…

I’m suspecting that the France-born and raised writer/editor, Father JMR Le Jeune, had in mind somebody’s actual pronunciation, kat instead of katr.

And we know that Métis / Canadian French says kat for ‘4’. For instance, that’s reflected in the Cree-French mixed language of the Métis nation, Michif, according to the online dictionaries from Prairies to Woodlands and the Algonquian Atlas.

“Four” is also kat in the wonderful little book, “Michif French: As Spoken by Most Michif People of St Laurent“. (That’s a French dialect, not the Cree-French language I just mentioned.)

There were Métis families living in Kamloops, as well as in association with other Indigenous communities in the direct experience of Father Le Jeune. From his “Kamloops Wawa”, we know that they spoke French.

His newspaper, and other sources, also show us non-Métis BC folks speaking Métis French, as I’ve written many times.

We’ve seen quite a number of other indications in “Kamloops Wawa” that Le Jeune had significant interaction with people speaking Métis French.

So, while I acknowledge that 2 occurrences of a word are not a lot to go on, I’m inclined to see the spelling likatta (with no “r”) as suggesting a Métis French pronunciation known to & used by local folks.

qʰata mayka təmtəm?
What do you think?