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[personal profile] muckefuck
As it continues to rain outside (for real this time, not some pretend sprinkle), I find myself wondering what connection, if any, there may be between Osage nížu "rain" and níi "water". Or between the latter and níiõpapa "lightning". I guess there's no way of knowing without getting my hands on a comparative dictionary of Proto-Siouan or the like.

Níi, btw, shows up in some surprising compounds such as níixoce "ash" (lit. "water-gray") and níiskuðe "salt" (lit. "water-sweet"; go ponder that for a while!). By contrast, níišoce "fog, haze" (lit. "water-smoke") makes more sense, but it's interesting to me that none of these actually denotes a fluid.

Contrast that to, say, Thai compounds headed by ná:m (generally reduced to nám), e.g. námka:m "semen" (lit. "water [of] kama"; also ná:mrák "water [of] love"), námphŷng "honey" (lit. "water [of] bee"), ná:msàlàt "salad dressing; mayo" (lit. "water [of] salad"), etc. Even namta:n "sugar" (lit. "water [of] sugar palm") makes sense once you consider how palm sugar is boiled down from sap. Námwă:n or "sweet water" also means more-or-less what you'd expect, namely "soft drink".

On the other hand Osage hpéecenii or "fire-water" does mean "whiskey", exactly as watching TV Westerns has led you to expect. (Beer, on the other hand, is hkáwacéženii "horse-pee-water".)
Date: 2006-08-29 12:34 am (UTC)

From: [identity profile] tyrannio.livejournal.com
I would expect "sweet water" to be non-salty water (IndE. "tasty water").
Date: 2006-08-29 02:51 pm (UTC)

From: [identity profile] muckefuck.livejournal.com
Same here. In the other languages I know, "sweet water" indicates either fresh (i.e. non-salty) water or some kind of sweet beverage. For instance, Korean 단물 refers either to fresh water or to the sweet juice of a fruit, such as an orange. The Osage word represents an extremely counter-intuitive coinage.

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