Lost in Translation...Almost

[Riverkilt]

So today at work I'm bifurcated for some chores and the boss says we're all going on a hike. Turns out its a long drive and then a hike to Secret Canyon - a slot canyon on the reservation.

Navajos have ways of using the English language that is creative....like a car is a "ride." A senior citizen is an "elderly."

So when we're driving back from the hike a Navajo lady says to me, "You should have worn your kill-it."

I guess "Kill-it" is close to kilt....

She's right, I should have, and would have, if I'd known.

[Liam]

Nice story, Ron!

[OC Richard]

Great story!

"Killit" for "kilt" is a perfect example of anaptyxis (how's that for a Scrabble word!) in other words the addition of an epenthetic vowel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epenthesis

This is common in Gaelic (gorm for example) and happens around here in English with our city Westminster which locals all call "Westminister".

About Native Americans and Scottish stuff, I think I've told this anecdote before but for those that haven't heard it: I was hired to play the pipes at a little media event where the State of California and The Chumash Nation had come to an agreement over the preservation of a region of land.

The Chief of the Chumash Nation had a smoldering root which he used to bless several of us. It was a moving thing to go through... I was told to extend my arms and I was blessed by smoke down both legs and along both arms. After he had done this to me I held out my pipes and he understood immediately and blessed them as well... a Native American, more than anyone, understands the sacredness of things, the lack of boundaries between what Europeans regard 'animate' and 'inanimate' things. (My pipes have also been blessed with Holy Water by a Roman Catholic Priest.)

[Riverkilt]

Missed the Chumash blessing story, thanks for retelling it.

On a sort of similar line...in Navajo sweat lodge part of it is the medicine man sprinkling herbal water on participants both in the lodge and outside the lodge after. I'm the only non-Navajo in the lodge...medicine man sprinkles everyone and the sloshes me three times in the lodge, and again after. I asked him why he sprinkled everyone else and sloshed me three times. He looked at me very seriously and said, "Ron - you NEED it soooo much!"

[dutchy kilted]

Maybe she thought you had hunted down a wild Tartan and killed it and skinned it!