PHILOLOGY OF THE OUANANICHE 55 



looking word lias become of late years, I have known of but one at- 

 tempt made to represent the correct pronunciation in printed let- 

 ters, and in that single instance such dense ignorance was shown 

 regarding the genealogy of the fish that the given pronunciation 

 might have been regarded with suspicion, particularly as after rep- 

 resenting the sound of the word, the writer, thereafter, throughout 

 his article, gave an English rendering of the word entirely different 

 from that which he had just said was correct. Canadian angling 

 writers have sometimes spelled the word in English in one way and 

 at another time in another way, representing entirely different 

 sounds, but in the following I am confirmed by Mr. E. T. D. Cham- 

 bers, of Quebec, who has collected fifteen mongrel forms of the 

 word, and who is an authority upon the subject. 



"Ouananiche is pronounced by the Montagnais Indian as if it 

 were spelled in English whonanishe. The first ' h ' is used because 

 they pronounce the word as if it commenced with an aspirate, and 

 the 'o' is employed for the broad sound of 'a,' as in the English 

 word 'wan.' I think the most common form of the word repre- 

 sented in English spelling is 'wininnish,' and Mr. Chambers ex- 

 plains how this has come about : ' The French, having no " w," and 

 their "ou" being nearly its equivalent, as in oui (pronounced " we"), 

 the original French spelling "ouananiche," for the employment of 

 which, in preference to English forms of the word, I have always 

 strenuously contended, is the best possible picture of the spoken 

 sound. Some of the French residents about Lake St. John pro- 

 nounce the word as if its first vowel were an "i," and give it the 

 English sound, and some anglers have carried this pronunciation 

 away with them, and so have arisen the many mongrel forms of 

 the word.' " 



There is but little to add to the above. I have al- 

 ready said that of all the anglicized forms of the word, 

 " wannanishe " comes nearest in pronunciation to the 

 Indian name. But the Indians usually pronounce it 

 with a kind of an aspirate at the commencement of the 

 word, which it is difficult to represent on paper, the 

 nearest approach that I can devise to the sound in writ- 

 ten characters being whon-na-nishe, whan-na-nishe, and 



