tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Sep 07 09:50:50 1995
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Re: }} Chakotay -- what did he say?
- From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: }} Chakotay -- what did he say?
- Date: Thu, 7 Sep 1995 09:50:50 -0400
>From: [email protected]
>Date: Wed, 06 Sep 1995 15:34:05 -0700 (MST)
>Hi. Re: your question about what Chakotay was saying in this week's
>episode, I think you are referring to what I transliterate as
>"akuchimoya," a term he also used in first season when teaching Janeway
>about spirit guides. Haven't discovered the language it comes from yet;
>I assume it's a native American language from the desert Southwest, but
>it's always possible that it's just something the scriptwriters made up.
>If you can get access to Closed Captioning, it gets printed on screen as
>"A-KOO-CHEE-MO-YA" or something similar. From the way he uses the word,
>I would guess that it glosses roughly as "spirit guide," not as the name
>of his particular guide, but more as a title. (I'm drawing that
>conclusion because he says the word, then his next sentence has the
>pronoun "you" in it; also, he had Janeway use the same word when she was
>searching for her spirit guide.)
Yeah, it sounded like "akuchimoya" to me, which proves nothing to speak of.
Best guess is that it's gibberish the writers threw in to sound cool. Then
again, they're trying to be oh-so culturally aware, it's certainly possible
they actually went out and found something that means something in some
Native American language (hey, they have Okrand's address, after all, and
isn't his expertise in those languages?)
Unfortunately, you can't even really hazard a guess as to the meaning.
There just isn't enough to go on. Chakotay and Janeway say the phrase at
the beginnings of their invocations of their spirit guides, yes... but
prayers and rituals are strange things, and just about anything could go
there. How about "In the names of my ancestors..." or "Praise to the Great
Spirit..." or any formalized ritual greeting or prayer-opening? Just not
enough there.
The only Native American language I'm *anywhere* into studying (and not
very far there AT ALL) is Cherokee, and I don't know enough to judge this
(then again, I haven't tried looking the word(s) up in my textbook). The
most I can say is that so far as I can tell "akuchimoya" is consistent with
the phonology of at least some dialects of Cherokee (a-ku-tsi-mo-ya in
more-or-less standard transliteration). But it's also consistent with the
phonology of Japanese, so that doesn't sound like really pwerful evidence.
~mark