Brad De Long a écrit:
>I thought it came from the "Allemanni," who were a German
> tribe who
> had some... friction... with the Franks back when both
> tribes lived
> on the right bank of the Rhine?
That's the story as I recall it too, from my <i>Histoire de la langue francaise</i> class back when I was a linguistics student.
BTW, I actually spent a chunk of my childhood among the Inuit in Nunavut (back when it was still part of the NWT) and I speak a little Inuktitut and a little James Bay Cree. (Badly - it was a long time ago, and I don't encounter a lot of Inuit or Cree in California.)
Inuit do tend to dislike the word Eskimo, in roughly the same way that "Negro" bothers other folks, but it seems to me there is some small controversy over the origin of the word. I'm not sure there is a Cree word that fits the traditional story of how Hudson's Bay Co. traders came to use it.
Having more times than I can count explained that as far as I know, there are only two real root words for snow in Inuktitut (and only one I can remember ever using), the lesson everyone should take from this is never to trust a story about historical linguistics unless it comes well documented.
Scott Martens
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