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From: meus0001@maroon.tc.umn.edu (William E Meuse)
Subject: Re: List of Mandan & Welsh Points of Resemblance
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Date: Sat, 11 Feb 1995 00:36:12 GMT
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John E Koontz (koontz@cam.nist.gov) wrote:
 {quoting me:}
: |> Here is I list of words in Mandan an Welsh that lead I fe propose that 
: |> both be included ina the Celtic family of languages. Note: For 

: Without going into great detail, Mandan is a Siouan language fitting
: very nicely into the Siouan language family somewhere between
: Crow-Hidatsa aka Missouri River Siouan and Mississippi Valley Siouan
: (Dakotan, Dhegiha, Chiwere, and Winnebago).  The parallels between
: Mandan vocabulary and other Siouan vocabulary are far more extensive
: and far better than those between Mandan and Welsh, and the
: correspondences are quite regular.  In addition, the grammar of Mandan
: matches the grammar of other Siouan languages point for point, while
: Welsh fits very well into Indo-European, modulo the usual Celtic
: transformations.  Neither looks anything like the other.

  Well just to show that this view is not universally uncontested, may I 
provide the followin quote from "The Dakota Languages"
by A.W. Williamson, Augustana College, Rock Island. Illinois from Amer. 
Antiquarian, January 1882:

 "It seems to me therefor that it is not unscientific to inquire whether 
the similarities of the various Dakotan languages to various European 
languages, modern and ancient, so often remarked are or are not 
accidental. It is very easy to see that the Dakota resembles the English 
in vocabulary much more than it resembles the Chippewa. The similarities 
of the Dakota suffixes, pronouns and prepositions to those given by Bopp, 
and the general resemblance of Dakotan languages to Sanskrit, Gothic, 
etc., in vocabulary, made me certain of relationship before I ever saw 
Fick's dictionary. Yet as I turned over his pages I was amazed at the 
similarity of the I.E. roots to the Dak roots.... The I.E. consonants are 
represented in Dakota, Santee and Titon dialects, and in Minnetaree in 
accordance with the following table...." [Author cantinues with copious 
examples.]
 
 : Siouanists have been known to debate the details of how Mandan
: relates to Crow-Hidatsa on the one hand and Mississippi Valley on the
: other, but there is not a particle of doubt that it is Siouan and not
: Celtic.
: Apart from the linguistic evidence there are about 1000 years of
: archaeological remains in the Middle Missouri Valley relating to the
: past residence there of the Mandan and Crow-Hidatsa people, and even
: more (given the convenience of written documentation) relating the
: Welsh to an increasingly small corner of Britain.  Moreover, there
: Agdhe=hau.
              <-   
 Could you explain this for me? 
 Cool runnins, Ras William I
