April 03, 2004
The Mi'kmaq:
Nova Scotia's dominant aboriginal population (with representation in Newfoundland and Quebec). Learn how to speak their language with a talking dictionary, (toboggan and wigwam are both borrowed words from the Mi'kmaq language), browse portraits from the 1500s to the present, discover their distinctive decorative techniques of porcupine quills on birchbark, and marvel at the fact that the biggest shopping centre in Halifax is still called Mic Mac Mall.
Unfortunately, neither monkey nor banana were in the dictionary. The title of this post, however, translates to [fling feces].
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Micmac D
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Here's another link for those curious about this people. [Older references may spell the name as Micmac, Mikmak and so on.]
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Incidently, livii, although Halifax and Dartmouth were -- ah -- amalgamated in 1996, the new hybrid does not spring trippingly to the tongue of many Haligonians as yet. Dartmouth is still the (pleasant enough) place across the waters.
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I actually love using HRM, considering it's indelibly linked to the Queen for me. I'm also just an imperialist at heart - we Haligonians amalgamated Dartmouth, and now we can claim it as our own. ;) (Or I was tired when I posted, one or the other). Are you from Halifax/Dartmouth/Nova Scotia? And yes, older refs use the anglicized spellings of the word. It's somewhat sad that so many places, however, still use it as well. I know people who really hate that.
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But, livii, wouldn't pretty much any spelling be foreign?
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Try this link for a good explanation of the spelling. I probably should have included it in my original post.
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Argh! It looked okay in preview... http://museum.gov.ns.ca/mikmaq/mikmaqsp.htm
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Link.
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go figger, no word for monkey or bananarz obviously uncivilized peoples (speaking about the ones down in the Mic Mac Mall) although that's fun to say over and over Mic Mac MallMic Mac MallMic Mac MallMic Mac Mall I'm going down to the Mic Mac Mall for some PopTarts interesting links, livii
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There's also a sizeable Mi'kmaq population on Prince Edward Island and a few in New Brunswick as well, though not the dominant group there.