OR/CA: Another Jargon word in the Klamath-Modoc language
From M.A.R. Barker’s very fine dictionary of Klamath, something I missed when I previously wrote about such loans.
Klamath Falls t’omo•lis racing 😁(image credit: TikTok)
There’s an entry,
t’omo•lis ‘barrel’
This t’omo•lis would seem to be an adaptation into Klamath-Modoc phonology of the Jargon’s word t’amúlch ‘barrel; tub; big barrel-shaped storage and utility basket’.
(Which is ultimately from Lower Chehalis Salish, where it has a literal meaning along the lines of a ‘tied-up container tool’.)
To my surprise (because this has to be a loan from Chinuk Wawa for a new foreign technology), Barker evidently sees this as analyzable within Klamath; he has an entry for a root:
t’omo•l ‘barrel’
I find it a little more difficult to locate a suffix -is (underlyingly -ys for Barker’s analysis). But there are quite a number of entries in his dictionary where a final “is” shows up on what look like nouns. (And, I think, on de-verbal nominals, that is, nouns made from verbs.)
He does have a third related entry,
tʼo[-]tʼmo•li•[-]k ‘little barrels’
There, the Diminutive suffix, underlyingly something like -ak’ according to Barker, is certainly not attached to the originally borrowed shape that ends in -s.
So Barker may be shedding some light on folk etymology by Klamath-Modoc speakers. IDK!
The takeaway
One thing that I keep learning is, the more Chinuk Wawa traces you find in a given Indigenous language…the more of ’em you’re still going to find!
Hey! I recognize that name! M.A.R. Barker wrote the Tékumel setting for early RPGs! A quick Googling does indeed show that it is the same M.A.R. Barker. His academic career was as a linguist.
I never played the Tékumel setting, but I remember seeing it listed in old TSR books, and advertised in Dragon magazine. The quick Googling shows that it is still supported by the Tékumel Foundation, that M.A.R. Barker died in 2012, and that in 1991 he published a novel “Serpent’s Walk”under a pseudonym, which was notoriously anti-Semitic. The Foundation even has a statement on it.
Kind of interesting when multiple interests intersect, although I suspect the amount of gamers interested in languages is higher than in the general population. Who hasn’t taught themselves Sindarin or Klingon amongst us?
Cultus kumtux, yaka ilep kloshe kumtux.
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Wow, grimpenmar, I’m grateful to get some background on Barker…pretty unexpected stuff eh! — Dave R
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