Tutelo-Saponi Phrases

Hi Rick! “Manglee wachiki” is pretty close to what I have, and would probably be understood. I have found that since the language was spoken and not written, everyone seems to have their own method of spelling things. Per my recently published Tutelo Lexicon, my method would be “Maminkle wagichi“.

If you want a detailed explanation, here’s just about everything anyone could want to know about these Tutelo words!

The word for “wind” was recorded by two scholars in the 1880s, Hale and Hewitt. Hale spelled it as: Maninkle, Maminkre, and Mamunklei; while Hewitt spelled it as: Mamankle, Mamanklei, and Mangre. We are now pretty sure that all nouns have two basic forms, “with article” and “without the article”, or as I call them, “articulate state” and “construct state”. The spellings Mamunklei (Hale) and Mamanklei (Hewitt) definitely show the article (-i); where Hale indicated a short “U”, Hewitt used “A” for the same sound, and I use “E” for the same short vowel. So I figure Mamanklei, Mamunklei and also Mamankle are all attempts to write the same articulate form, which I write as Mamenkley. That leaves Maninkle, Maminkre (Hale) and Mangre (Hewitt) as possible variants of the construct form. Maninkle was the form given by Nikonha, the last full-blood speaker, who was 105 years old. Another related word is the verb Omakle, to become windy. The letters R and L are interchangeable, not really different letters. Taking all this into consideration, I settled on the spelling Maminkle (construct) and Mamenkley (articulate), with Mangre, Maminkre as variants of the construct. (The final -y is only an aesthetic preference and is the same as -i)

For “Dance” we have three primary sources, Hale, Frachtenberg and Sapir. These last two recorded some words about 30 years after Hale. The forms they gave are: Wagitci, Waketshi, Ketci, Kitci (Hale); Mongitci, Wagitci (Frachtenberg) and Wagetsi’i (Sapir). This is mainly a veb “to dance”, but apparently Wagichi (as I spell it) can also be used as a noun.

When you have two nouns together in a phrase, the first is in the construct state, and the article always goes on the second. So “Wind dance” is literally Maminkle wagichi (wagichi already ends in i so I spell the articulate the same as the construct, the i may be slightly longer).

Here are some more forms of the verb:

(Ima) wagichi – he, she or it dances

(Mima) wawigichi – I dance

(Yima) wayigichi – you dance

(Ima) wagichise – (he, she or it is) dancing

(Yima) wayigichise – you are dancing

(Mima) wawigichiwa – I have danced

(Mima) wawigichita – I will dance

So Maminkle wagichi could also mean “Wind dances”

“wind dancer” could literally be wagichise maminkle, dancing wind. But, Tutelo personal names usually seem to be in the most abbreviated form possible. So therefore, I would advise going with something like either Gichi-mankle or Mankle-gichi as a personal name.

Always glad to help!

Thank you so much, Minak-oknahose, for this wonderful work you’re doing. I’m so excited to see you’ve gotten the dictionary in print and available.

What does Minak-oknahose mean?

Is Kihimanketesena a Tutelo word? Like pila huc?

Does pilahuc have such an interesting literal meaning?

Thanks for the welcome, spilleddi! And thanks for all your help in preparing the new Tutelo Dictionary!

Linda, as for the words for ‘thanks’ – the first one was recorded by Lieut. Fontaine at Ft. Christanna in 1716 as Ketemaghketersinaw‘ – “I thank you sir”. This was in the days before scientific understanding of linguistics, so it can be challenging to make out the nuances of orthography as used in the 1600s and 1700s. But basically, we can recognize today that this fits the form of a Tutelo negative verb, having both the prefix ki- and suffix –na. So what negative verb would it be, meaning ‘thank you’?

The other piece of the puzzle was provided by James Dorsey, who was working in the same timeframe as Hale and Hewitt (1880s) and recorded much information. He wrote the following verb form: Lewa hi manki ta – “This, lay it down”. The word Lewa corresponds with “this”, and himankita does seem to be a verb, but it is in the form of a future tense, not an imperative – in other words, with all the information we have now, we can suggest a more literal translation of Lewa himankita as “He will lay this down”. The field workers such as Dorsey wrote things down just as they were told, as best they could, and they were also working through Cayuga (Iroquois) interpreters, so it’s not unusual for the English glosses to be slightly idiosyncratic and inexact; that is why he wrote it as “This, lay it down”. Stripping the future tense suffix -ta, we can deduce the verb Himanka meant “lay down, set aside”. Negative future is thus Kihimankitena, “won’t lay down / set aside” and add in the -SE- for progressive (SE works similar to English -ing) in the right place, and we get Kihimankitesena, literally “It won’t be getting set aside”, which is close to what Fontaine wrote. Someone probably spoke the word very slowly for Fontaine to write down, so he recorded it as Ketemaghketersinaw. The first -te- in place of hi- is either misheard, or an older dialect, or possibly is the correct prefix converting it to a passive verb. But either way, it seems a nice and sincere thing to say if someone gives you a present – “It won’t get set aside”, and more meaningful than just “Thanks”.

Pila huc or Bilahuk “Thanks, praise” is probably originally from Bihle huk, “All good” or similar. Another form of the same verb, Biwa or Biwah can also mean “thanks”.

Mi koremichen!

I’ll get things set up for the sound files if someone can volunteer to prepare and upload them. If we wait for me to get the spare time, it might not ever happen. It will take more patience with a tedious task than computer skills.