So many Métis words in interior PNW languages (Part 12: Umatilla Sahaptin — breads and rooms)
Umatilla Sahaptin is a language of tribal people who met non-Native newcomers fairly early……Which is to say, that contact occurred before Settlers came flooding in to their lands in northeast Oregon and southeast Washington.
(Here’s a link to all previous installments in this mini-series.)
A bread room! (Image credit: Trend Hunter)
In Umatilla, we find an array of Métis/Canadian French-sourced words that have been in the language long enough that many have taken on lives of their own.
I found these in my physical copy of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation dictionary, but you can use that same dictionary online for free.
- čalámat ‘pipe; ceremonial pipe’
[From ‘calumet’.] - lakaláat ‘carrot’
[From ‘la carotte’.] - lakamíin ‘stew; flour thickened stew; salmon gravy’
[I notice the dictionary doesn’t suggest any etymology for this word, unlike its treatment of some other, but not all, Métis/Canadian French-sourced entries. I’ve discovered that the source appears to be a North American French la gamine for ‘coarse flour’.] - laklí ‘key’
[From la clef.] - lalupáa ‘ribbon’
[From le ruban.] - lamitú ~ limitú ‘sheep’
[From le mouton.] - *lapala ‘[bread baked in ashes*]
[I infer this unindexed root from the entries i[-]lapala[-]yí which is translated into local English as ‘picture bread; fire bread [a calque on Chinook Jargon’s paya-saplil]; Bannock [sic, as if it came from that nearby tribe instead of from the Canadian/Métis word] bread’ and šapa[-]lapala[-]yí ‘reflected’ which is used in šapalapalayí ipáax̣ ‘picture bread; Bannock [sic] bread’.
The affixes look like normal Umatilla stuff to me: perhaps í- ‘Transitivizer’, -yi ‘Applicative’, and šapá- ‘Causative’.
As I’ve discovered, this word (lapʰala in CW) comes from North American French l’apola ‘food cooked on skewers or stewed’, ultimately from an Eastern Algonquian or Iroquoian source.
I don’t think we’ve previously found this word borrowed into a PNW language, so this is a discovery.] - lapám ‘apple’
[From la pomme.] - lapatáat ‘potato’
[From la patate; interestingly not in the usual folksy North American pronunciation la pataque.] - laputáy ‘bottle’
[From la bouteille.] - laswíi ‘handkerchief; napkin; wash cloth’
[The dictionary, half-erroneously, proposes a French etymology l’essuyer, which is not a known common noun and which would ungrammatically use the Umatilla suffix -ma ‘human plural’.
(Which incidentally is exemplified, says the dictionary, by aláyma ‘Frenchman; halfbreed’ and (?) its plural aláymama ‘French people; halfbreeds’ — a mysterious stem that’s just possibly an old borrowing from Chinuk Wawa x̣lúyma ‘other(s); different’).
At any rate, I need to point out that Umatilla’s laswíi appears to be a semantic portmanteau/mashup (as also in another Oregon language, Klamath) of 2 words commonly borrowed into PNW languages, l’essui-mains ‘towel’ and la soie ‘silk’.] - lašáam ‘room’, used in a phrase nč̓utpamá lašáam ‘bedroom’
[This is an exciting new find! It’s from le chambre, which we’ve not previously found loaned into Pacific Northwest languages — not even into Chinook Jargon.] - latáam ‘table; table cloth spread on the floor’
[From le table ‘table’, and used for such a long time in Umatilla that it’s taken on a newer second meaning.] - likúuk ‘chicken’
[The dictionary’s suggestion that this comes from a plural in French strikes me as spurious; it’s from le coq ‘rooster’.] - limíil ‘mule; donkey’
[From la mule. Synonym: mulá, which both the dictionary and I take as one of the rare (Mexican) Spanish-sourced words in PNW languages.] - lipwáa ~ lapwáa ‘peas’
[From le(s) pois.] - lisáak ‘sack; sacking; burlap’
[From le sac.] - lišáal ‘shawl’
[From la châle.] - lɨmyáy ‘elder (term of respect)
[Not in the main dictionary; found on p. 505 of the English-to-Umatilla section. If indeed a borrowing, it’s most likely via Chinuk Wawa, but ultimately from la vieille ‘old woman’.]
