We gotta correct “lareh”, once & for all!
The mistaken spelling < lareh > has caused no end of consternation.
Someone with a better claim to the name (image credit: Facebook)
I’ve pointed it out in passing, previously in this space.
Coming across no less an expert than Louis-Napoleon St Onge, whose first language was French, wrassling with it puts this at the top of my agenda.
His handwritten dictionary (from 1890 or so) has this entry:
laleĥ “barley”
This seems to be a synonym for his entry < lolsh >, which he may have known from firsthand experience on the middle Columbia River years before.
Perhaps here St Onge is copying from the “Columbian line” of Chinuk Wawa dictionaries (Samuel V Johnson’s dissertation 1978:13 and 87), which is the source of an apparent typesetter’s misspelling < lareh > for “barley”.
So he’s trying to make sense of the weird spelling, as if he figured it must be some obscure Indigenous word.
Compare the source word, French “l’orge”.
The takeaway is, wherever you find a form like *laleh* or *lareh* for “barley” in an old Jargon dictionary, be aware it just shows that someone misread lolsh or lalsh from a handwritten master document!
Feel free to correct them!
