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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  1478 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Anyone ever feel tempted to pronounce "Arkansas" as "Are Kansas" or "Kansas" as "Can Saw" just to mess with people?

Who named these states? Why don't their borders touch? Who's idea was it to put "Can Saw Kitty" in the great state of "Misery"?





ThurberMingus  ·  1478 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Soooo all this is from skimming Wikipedia...

Various siouan-language-speaking tribes in the area.

Arkansas is the Algonquin name [passed through French] for the Quapaw Nation.

Kansas is one spelling of one name of the Kaw nation. Probably also derived through French and Algonquin.

Kansas City was founded in the Kansas River of course. I know that KCMO was in the Kansas territory at one point, but it's way too late at night for me to figure out when it ended up on the wrong side of the border. KCK is half a century younger so somewhere in there.

user-inactivated  ·  1478 days ago  ·  link  ·  

. . . Man. I did not know these were French spellings of Native American names. I didn't pick up that that's what you were saying last night. Now I feel like a heel. Don't get me wrong, I'll gladly make fun of English and how non-sensical it is half the time, and I totally thought Kansas and Arkansas were English words, but it's not my place to make fun of another language.

Thanks for taking the time to look up and share some history with me. I appreciate it.

I feel like a bit of an asshole now, though. Sincerest apologies if I offended anyone reading this post. I legit didn't know.

ThurberMingus  ·  1477 days ago  ·  link  ·  

You don't need to feel bad for finding humor in the game of telephone that results in most of our place names.

There are a whole bunch of names in the Midwest that came from the French asking one native questions about people who spoke completely unrelated languages that they didn't know.

user-inactivated  ·  1477 days ago  ·  link  ·  

In general, I agree. Seeing as how awful the history of Native American treatment in America is, including the willful destruction of their languages, in this instance I don't know . . . I feel like I messed up.

I'm not the kind of guy that would want to blindly, and definitely not willfully, make fun of other people's language. It's a pretty precious cornerstone of culture.

ThurberMingus  ·  1477 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Huh. I do think the situations is funny. Feels like i'm making fun of our mixups not their native languages, but what do I know about the other perspective.