Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren vogebam here. Imagine you're an intrepid seventeenth century French
Speaker 1: explorer transversing the expansive wilderness of Louisiana a k a
Speaker 1: New France, a territory spanning the entire Mississippi basin from
Speaker 1: modern day Louisiana through Illinois and northward into Canada. You
Speaker 1: encounter dozens of native tribes, each with its own language
Speaker 1: or dialect, and you attempt to record their names in
Speaker 1: your journal as best you can. This imperfect system is
Speaker 1: how English speaking Americans eventually arrived at many of their
Speaker 1: names for Native American tribes, including the Dakota, Iowa, Alabama, Nebraska, Ottawa, Chippewa,
Speaker 1: and Tuscaloosa. I think of it as a centuries long
Speaker 1: game of multi lingual telephone. These words evolved from their
Speaker 1: original pronunciation into a French approximation, and finally into an
Speaker 1: anglicized mangling of the French, which brings us to the
Speaker 1: legitimately confusing question of how the state of Kansas spelled
Speaker 1: k A N S A S could be pronounced Kansas,
Speaker 1: while the nearby state of Arkansas spelled a r K
Speaker 1: A N S A S is pronounced Arkansas. This question
Speaker 1: was a subject of a pamphlet published way back in
Speaker 1: one titled Fixing the Pronunciation of the name Arkansas. The booklet,
Speaker 1: written by members of the Arkansas Historical Society, was meant
Speaker 1: to provide historical context to a resolution passed by the
Speaker 1: Arkansas General Assembly declaring the one and only correct pronunciation
Speaker 1: of Arkansas to quote, it should be pronounced in three syllables,
Speaker 1: with the final S silent the A, and each syllable
Speaker 1: with the Italian sound and the accent on the first
Speaker 1: and last syllables, being the pronunciation formally universally and now
Speaker 1: still most commonly used. Apparently, what happened was that some
Speaker 1: egg heads at Webster's Dictionary had changed the entry for
Speaker 1: Arkansas to include a new pronunciation note are Kansas formerly Arkansas,
Speaker 1: and that sent red blooded Arkansas ins into a lexigraphical tizzy.
Speaker 1: The authors of the Arkansas Historical Society pamphlet called it
Speaker 1: a vicious pronunciation with no basis of reason, authority, or
Speaker 1: prior polite usage. And moreover, people who said are Kansas,
Speaker 1: according to the pamphlet quote failed to consider that they
Speaker 1: would thus render ridiculous, a name highly poetiquet. It sounds
Speaker 1: and associated with the grandest memories of the past, from
Speaker 1: the days of Marquette downward, Marquette being the French explorer
Speaker 1: Jacques Marquette. The Arkansas Historical Society members argued that the
Speaker 1: divergent pronunciations of Arkansas and Kansas stem from similar French
Speaker 1: names given to two different Native American tribes. A Sioux
Speaker 1: tribe lived near the modern day Kansas River, and early
Speaker 1: French explorers called them by an approximation of their name,
Speaker 1: which sounded to French ears like Kansas. The second tribe,
Speaker 1: the Quapa, lived further southwest along the modern day Arkansas River.
Speaker 1: For reasons unknown, even though the Quapa spoke a Suan language,
Speaker 1: the French called them by an Algonquin name Arkansas. Those names,
Speaker 1: as the French rendered them, look and sound very similar,
Speaker 1: but again for reasons unknown, early French explorers wrote out
Speaker 1: the associated place names very differently. Explorer on Rijotel, writing
Speaker 1: in seven wrote out the word for the area around
Speaker 1: modern day Arkansas a C C A N C Sidilla
Speaker 1: E A S, and he spelled Kansas C H A
Speaker 1: N Z E S by seventeen twenty three, Arkansas was
Speaker 1: routinely spelled the way it is today, but as late
Speaker 1: as eighteen o five, French photographer Perin the Lack spelled
Speaker 1: Kansas k A N c E with a grave accent s.
Speaker 1: Clearly at some point in R was added to the
Speaker 1: Algonquin name Arkansas. One theory mentioned in a nine article
Speaker 1: in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly is that hunters from the
Speaker 1: tribe used a particularly cool bow, and the French word
Speaker 1: for bow is arc. Other French explorers called the Arkansas
Speaker 1: River the river of arcs or bends for its curvy course,
Speaker 1: so either admiration for the weapon or the term for
Speaker 1: the river might have influenced the French pronunciation of the name,
Speaker 1: which brings us to the pronunciation question. The eighty one
Speaker 1: Arkansas Historical Society pamphlet concluded that eventually colonists in Kansas
Speaker 1: chose to follow the standard English pronunciation, marked by a
Speaker 1: hard A sound and vocalizing the final s, while Arkansas
Speaker 1: colonists stuck with the original French pronunciation with a long
Speaker 1: romance language ah sound. They noted that in the past,
Speaker 1: Arkansas was sometimes spelled A R K N S A
Speaker 1: W including in the eighteen peace treaty between the United
Speaker 1: States and the Quapa, and they said that the inclusion
Speaker 1: of the s at the end of the modern spell
Speaker 1: was likely a product of pluralization. If the tribe was
Speaker 1: called the Akinsaw, then multiple members of the tribe were
Speaker 1: the Atkins Saws. But since the final S is silent
Speaker 1: in French, all that's left is the awe sound. In
Speaker 1: eighty the Arkansas Historical Society wrote the iconic American poet
Speaker 1: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow for his take on the pronunciation question.
Speaker 1: He replied, I confess I prefer the sound of Arkansas
Speaker 1: as being more musical than Arkansas. Case closed. Today's episode
Speaker 1: was written by Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler Clang
Speaker 1: for iHeart Media and How Stuff Works. For more on
Speaker 1: this and lots of other topics, visit our home planet,
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com.