Times of day

Time and the concept in Potawatomi Time was never important to the Potawatomi people. You did something until you got it done or you went without. The most important mark of time was in the seasons and moons. We followed a 13 moon cycle. Each moon was descriptive of what was done during that month. For example maple syrup month or Leaves changing color month. We will cover all of the months in an upcoming lesson.

The concept of hours and minutes These also tended to make little difference until modern times to our people. You may have heard the expression running on indian time. Hence running behind or getting something done in your own good time. We are going to explain in the next lesson how we talk about time today as our world has certainly become very dependent on time.

Times of day In this lesson we are going to focus on different times of day. These would be seen as much more important to our ancestors than exact time. Besides that our ancestors would have been very adapt at telling exact time by looking at the sun. Today if someone asked one of us to look at the sun and tell them what time it was we would most probally be lost or at least a little off.

Some words for times of day Some of these words have been introduced in previous lessons but not explained in more depth until now. Ngom- today or now. Wabek- tomorrow. Waben- Morning. Pkonyak- evening Geshep early morning

How do we say time? It is indicated by the letters pi. For example ode jo pi means at this time. Bama pi- which is used at goodbye means literally at a later time. We cant use this pi alone but will talk a little more about it in the next lesson.

Bos geshep –very early morning Zheba- this past morning Dbeket- night Aptedbeket- midnight (half way through the night) Dbekok- last night. Gishkepkonyak- dark ( after evening)

Gishget- day Nawkwe- noon nawkwek- at noon. Gishnawkwe- afternoon Bgeshmok- evening (the time when the sun sets)

Our language is exstremely descriptive As I am certain you can see from the literal translation of many of these words as well as talking about the months themselves.

Word of caution Don’t become to worried about what a word literally means. I only tell these to you because I find them interesting. As you learn more of the language you will understand why these words mean what they do. If you worry to much about the literal you will miss the everyday usuage the word is used for. Hence instead of hearing aptedbeket and thinking night you might think lets see half way through the evening. While you are thinking that the rest of the sentence may have gone by.