Date: Sat, 07 Nov 1998 08:39:57 -0700
From: Ranald Gault <gaultr@cadvision.com>
To: baidarka@lists.intelenet.net
Subject: Re: baidarka spirit lines
Chris Kohut wrote:
> ....ok, while we're on the subject of aborigional speech, who, off the top of
> their heads, can give me the Aleut phrase for those little grooves running down
> the inside of the gunnels, which we translate spirit lines? Clock's
> ticking........
Chris,
I've been raiding the library for a while on the spirit line topic, and I haven't
yet been able to find a specifically Aleut (either Attuan or Atkan) reference to
the 'spirit line' grooves, though they did appear in boats from that region. In
past discussions, Wolfgang Brinck recalled the Yup'ik term given by Zimmerly:
"kuagua kumugak". Apparently Zimmerly didn't use a standard orthography in
recounting the kayak terminology he listed in "Hooper Bay Kayak
Construction"(1979), but rather a system that he found practical for field
studies. The term "kuagua kumugak" actually translates to English as something
like 'scratches [in the wood] where their edges come together' -- essentially a
carpentry term. I still think it's reasonable though to call the carved lines
'spirit lines', as Wolfgang did in his book.
In any case, "kuagua kumugak" isn't an Aleut term and, according to the language
scholar I asked, it's not entirely recognizable as a proper Yup'ik term either
though it's close to being so. The Yup'ik language is Eskimoan, as is its close
relative Alutiiq, a principal native language of peninsular Alaska and Kodiak
Island, and they are apparently quite unlike the Aleut languages. There's probably
a Alutiiq term close to the one given by Zimmerly, but I -- feeble linguist that I
am -- couldn't derive it from an Alutiiq dictionary I checked.
Ranald Gault