Poser on sizi

by

I just want to comment on a single Dakelh (Carrier) word in a single article by a friend of mine:William J. Poser. 2008. Father Morice’s rendering of Latin in Carrier syllabics. Northwest Journal of Linguistics 2(4):1-9.

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Pages 7-8 tell us (and here French [y] is the “ü” sound as in German):

While Morice was correct in his assumption that Carrier speakers would adapt [y] to one of their
existing vowels, he appears to have been incorrect in his judgment of how they would do so. As can be
seen in the list of French loans below, Carrier has often borrowed French [y] as /u/ rather than /i/. The
only instance of which I am aware in which French [y] was borrowed as /i/ is [sizi] “Jesus” (French
Jésus [ʒezy]), the pronounciation of which may very well have been determined by Father Morice and
the religious material that he produced rather than by Carrier speakers’ perception of the French. [sizi]
is in any case anomalous in adapting French [ʒ] as /s/ rather than /z/ and in adapting French [e] as /i/ rather than /e/. [Footnote 6]

[Footnote 6] It is possible that /sizi/ is not the result of direct contact with French. Derivation from Chinook Jargon /sesu/ does not seem promising as no change is required to make it phonologically acceptable in Carrier. It is conceivable that /sizi/ has its origin in the pseudo-Christian prophet movement, in which case it may have passed through several native languages.

I say Carrier (Dakelh) sizi for ‘Jesus’ is not 100% explained by the above hypotheses.

Instead, it’s reasonably clear that sizi is simply one of the many old Dakelh borrowings from fur-trade era Canadian/Métis French, which was the lingua franca of interior British Columbia before Chinook Jargon arrived.

Relevantly, C/MFr already had 2 pronunciation habits that explain the pronunciation sizi which Bill Poser so well shows us is unexpected by the phonological rules of Carrier:

  1. C/MFr has frequent “sibilant harmony”, traces of which we see also in Chinook Jargon words from C/MFr like lishesh ‘chair’ — originally la chaise [lašεz]. This explains the “s” and “z” in Carrier sizi.
  2. C/MFr pronounces the original French /e/ phoneme as [i], again preserved in Chinuk Wawa words such as lipʰyi ‘foot, feet’ — originally le(s) pieds [ləpye ~ lepye]. This explains the first “i” in Carrier sizi.

All that’s left, then, is to account for the second “i” in Carrier sizi. That, my friends, may have something to do with contact between Dakelh speakers and, not just Canadian/Métis French speakers, but also speakers of the other Northern Dene (Athabaskan) languages that had been around fur-trade workers even earlier. For instance, McLeod Lake Tse’Khene (Sekani) also has sizi.

At any rate, here I’ve proposed an improved understanding of the well-known post-contact word sizi ‘Jesus’ in a Dene language of central BC.

ikta mayka chaku-kəmtəks?
What have you learned?

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