BARudes: The verb hau- is intriguing for it bears an uncanny resemblence to the widespread particle hao?, h'au? (Seneca and Tuscarora forms, respectively) which variously means o.k., already, hello, come on in, welcome in languages throughout the east and into the plains. It might be a predication of that particle. John Koontz: I've always thought this was an interesting form. Because it is so widespread (though I have no idea precisely how widespread), I've tended to suspect that it might be pre-Contact. Greetings in h-back vowel are certainly fairly common in Europe, too, perhaps without inheritance, though I've not seen anything on the subject. However, hau certainly also looks like an English loan, i.e., from "How (do you do)?" I imagine it might be possible to document the progress of the term, it it is a loan, though I don't know of any relevant comments, and it might be difficult to get past misconceptions on the part of the recordists. By the way, add Hopi to the list of languages with hau. BARudes: The fact that the word = hau is recorded for Huron by French Jesuits (it appears, for example, in the Rev. Pierre Potier's manuscripts which are, for the most part, copies of the manuscripts of Chaumanot, who recorded the Huron language in the mid-seventeenth century) long before the Huron had substantial contact with English speakers makes it unlikely that the word is borrowed from English . Also, the range of meaning in Iroquoian languages (o.k., all-right, sure, welcome, come on in) would be hard to derive from the meaning/usage of in English. David S. Rood: Two comments. First, greetings don't seem to be important to many of the people I've talked to. In Wichita you can say either acstisa:khir7i 'it's a good day' or 'e*:si:rasi:ci*is', literally 'how are you' -- but both are considered kind of awkward. Violet tells me her preferred greeting in Lakhota is "wahi" 'I have arrived'. If the other person sees you first, that person can say instead "yahi", 'you have arrived'. That seems to match some of the things some of the others of you have been saying (and of course takes us back to the motion verb discussion by another route....) Paul Voorhis: A Winnebago informant years ago was at a loss to suggest any greetings beyond comments on the weather, and Mesquakie (= Fox) informants couldn't think of anything at all except "Where are you going?" which they said was obsolete as a greeting. But the Mesquakie language was still in daily use in their community at that time, so I could observe what actually happened. Remarks about the weather were regularly the first words spoken when Mesquakie speakers encountered one another outside their homes. > > On approaching a native-style house, whether wigwam or teepee, it seems to me that people make a point of conversing loudly enough that those inside will be made aware of someone coming. Sound passes easily through the walls of such dwellings. The people in the house then usually shout out something to those approaching; whether it's "Come on in!" or "Wait a minute!" or "Who's there?" or a joking reference to the visitors depends on the situation. No greetings are really needed here nor is there a place for them. > A widespread Central Algonquian remark on departure is the word for 'already'. It may be followed by an independent 1st person pronoun. It is more an announcement that one is leaving than a goodbye, though some seem to feel that > it's required at the end of a visit. The Dakota equivalent would be "wana", "wana miye", or "wana uNkiyepi", but I have never heard these words used in the same way in Dakota. People tell me "wana wahde-kte" 'I'll go home now' or > "wana uNhdap-te" 'we'll go home now' could be so used but I haven't heard those either out in the real world. For whatever it's worth, I've heard the same "raji(wi)/ you've come (pl)" among the older generation Ioway-Otoes. Jimm Robert Rankin: > ... The Poncas don't seem to be big on greetings. I'm told that often a visitor will just be greeted with "dhathi'a" 'Did you (sg.) arrive?' or "dhathii'a" 'Did you (pl.) arrive?' The Kaws have similar expressions that Mrs. Rowe used. There is an older tradition for asking how a person is doing, for men at least, among both the Kaws and the Osages. It is much more elaborate. I won't go through the whole thing here, but it involves the terms "da~he'" (Kaw) and "ta~he'" (Osage) followed by a classificatory verb ('sitting, standing, lying, moving') in the 2nd person. So, for example, in Kaw you might say "da~he yayi~$e" 'how are you doing?' (literally 'how are you moving?'). Same for sitting, etc. And with analogous expressions in Osage. There's a long list. None of the Kaws or Osages I've talked to about it identify "da~he" as anything special, but if you look it up in La Flesche's 1932 Osage Dictionary (under "donhe" with raised "n"), you find that the concept was a somewhat complicated social one involving social status, personal honor, etc. The interesting part is that this could suggest that the Kaws and Osages were a part of some more complex and stratified social order at an earlier time (there's been much speculation among anthropologists about possible "Mississippian" affiliations of Dhegiha tribes). On the other hand, there may be Omaha/Ponca analogs of da~he that I don't know about. The form of the word if it exists should be [da~he'] or [do~he'], where ' represents accent.