III.
OF GENDER.
4. There are three ways of distin-
guishing the genders of nouns,
First; By the use of different words,
as,
wa-gae,------------a man.
he-na-a-gae--------a woman.
e-nro,-------------a stone.
e-cen-to-eg-ae, ----a young man.
e-ce-hme-eg-ae,----a girl, or maiden.
5. Sec'd; By the addition of to-kae, sig-
nifying a male, and meg-ae, a female.
as;
ju--gae,-----------a horse.
ju-gk'-to-kae, ------a stallion
ju-gk'-meg-ae,------a mare.
NOTE. It will be seen that these are contractions
for ju-gae to-kae a stallion, and ju-gae me-gae a
mare: and so in other examples. (P. 14. 2.)
6. Third; By adding to words of the
masculine gender the feminine termi-
nation me, as,
wa-je-kae, --------a person, a man.
=== end p. 16 ===
Lance's Notes for p. 16
Gender is distinguished by three ways.
1. Different words for different genders:
wa-gae, ---a man,
wage (H/I)
wange (today)
Mahi (Knife), an Ioway man
This shows the difficulty of both Ham-
ilton and Irvin's system, and that of
today.
And now, I will self-indulge a pet peeve
in learning Ioway...a short rant on how
to write Ioway-Otoe:
PROBLEMS IN IOWAY-OTOE
ORTHOGRAPHY
(orthography = how sounds are represented
by a writing system)
In wage/wange, the "a" should be nasalized,
and H/I did not show that in their orthography.
Their orthography would result in saying
WAH-gay (wage). Someone unaccustomed
to the system might even say "wage" as in
"hourly wage"!
Today's orthography denotes the nasal-
ization of a noun by putting an
"n" after the "a," as in "man" which would
be said "MAH" with a nasal tone to the "a".
Again, a modern person might be tempted
to say "man" as in "a male."
It gets even worse if there is an NG
(as in song) sound right after the nasalized
"man" as in mange "chest"--
is it MAHNG-ay
or MAHNG-gay?
Here, is wage/wange/wannge:
WAH-gay = wage (today)
WANG-ay = wange (today)
WAHNG-gay? = wangge (today)
You see the problem. Without a specific
way to show the "a" is nasalized, and
a special character for the NG sound
(1 character), things are not as efficient
as they could be.
If one uses "an" to show the "a" is nasalized-
If one uses "ng" for
the NG sound in "song"-
and the "g" for the
sound in "goat"-
Then you would have
"wanngge" for WANG-gay.
Using linguistic notations
would only require 5 letters for the same word.
Oh well, we could wish for the moon
too, because people resist using
"odd-looking letters"...plus one cannot
show the special linguistic orthography
on the average Internet system anyways!
Ok, now back to Hamilton and Irvin...
Kunzayami (Circling Above), an Ioway woman
he-na-a-gae--------a woman.
hina'age (H/I)
hinage (today) - It's interesting that
Hamilton and Irvin have an extra "a" in
there, which seems to indicate a glottal
stop was once a part of the word, but
had disappeared between 1848 (when
H/I published their work) and the 1930s
when Gordon Marsh did his fieldwork.
(Oh yeah... I forgot to tell you. Although
William Whitman gets the credit for the
Ioway-Otoe linguistics published in 1947,
the fieldwork was actually done by Gordon
Marsh in the 1930s...I have compared
Marsh's notes with the Whitman article,
and they are verbatim...OUCH...but that's
another story...)
This is Pilot Rock, an important landmark
in northwest Iowa, near Cherokee and
overlooking the Little Sioux River, used by
the Ioway, Otoe, and other tribes in
pathfinding across the prairie.
e-nro,-------------a stone.
inro (H/I)
inro (today) (the "i" is nasalized, so
EEN-ro...remember the "r" is not like
the English "r" but more like the flapped
Spanish "r", not the trilled "r")
An illustration of four kids at a powwow for a children's book, by Lance Foster
e-cen-to-eg-ae, ----a young man.
ichintoige (H/I)
(ee-cheen-to-ee-gay)
ichindoinge (today) = a boy, up until puberty
(ee-CHEEn-doh-eeng-ay)
e-ce-hme-eg-ae,----a girl, or maiden.
ichihmi'ige (H/I)
(ee-CHEE-hmee-eeg-ay)
ichiminge (today) = a girl, up until puberty
(ee-CHEE-hmeeng-ay)
Do you see some of the subtle differences
that seem to represent changes in
pronunciation over the last hundred and fifty
years?
One more sound to highlight here that
Hamilton and Irvin did not mark as a separate
sound, but that they did mark in this word,
and which continues as a separate sound in today's
Ioway-Otoe. That is the sound HM in
ichiHMinge "girl." It is not a sound I have
heard in any of the other languages I have studied.
In Ioway "r" is like Spanish "r" in "pero" (but), and
in Ioway "x" is like the "ch" sound in German "achtung!"
(attention!)..but there are sounds in Ioway-Otoe that
are unique in my experience. One of them is the
HM sound... it is made by saying the "mmm" sound
while expelling air through the nostrils. For real.
You can hear it in "sahma" (SAH-hma) = seven.
There is also a version for N, as in HN. You can hear
it in HNye.. future tense:
hamanyi = "I walk"
hamanyi hnye = "I will walk"
2. Gender is also indicated in at least some
animals by adding:
to-kae, added to indicate a male
toke (H/I)
doge (today)
meg-ae, added to indicate a female.
mige (H/I)
minge (today) (MEENG-ay)
SO...
ju--gae,-----------a horse.
shuge (H/I)
shunge --
But today's forms are interestingly:
Otoe= sunge (SOONG-geh)
Ioway= shunye (SHOON-yeh)
ju-gk'-to-kae, ------a stallion
shugk'toke (H/I)
shungdoge (today) (SHUNG-doh-geh)
(From ju-gae to-kae = shunge+doge)
ju-gk'-meg-ae,------a mare.
shugk'mige (H/I)
shungminge (today) (SHUNG-meeng-eh)
(From ju-gae me-gae = shunge+minge)
3. Add to the end of words indicating
a human male, the suffix -me (-mi)
wa-je-kae, --------a person, a man.
washike (H/I)
wanshige (today)
Note that there are two words for "man"
so far: wange and wanshige
This example continues on the next page (p. 17)
where H/I give the example of wanshigemi,
"female human being," a word not in use today.
We will look at this in the notes for tomorrow.
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