Making the sounds?

[Mike Cleven]

Nadja Adolf wrote:
>
>         Wel, wek dret khakwa nayka na tEmtEm, Nadja.
>         I beg to differ.
>
>         Some of the sounds of Grand Ronde Chinuk-wawa would be hard to imitate
>         exactly, based only on written explanations of them.  But I think a
>         person would have a good idea of what they must sound like, and would
>         recognize them when they're spoken, given only that amount of exposure.
>
> I still stand by my statement if that one is not a linguist and one has not
> attended a conference at GR, understanding and differentiating these sounds
> is very difficult. Exposure is unlikely if one hasn't attended a conference.

Even for a linguist, and use of these particular sounds isn't at all
necessary for learning or expressing oneself in the Jargon......

>
>         And if you've heard Sechelt, or Georgian, or Amharic (et al.) spoken,
>         you've heard nearly all the sounds in GR Chinuk already.
>
> No offense, but unless you work for customs, immigration, or are a linguist,
> hearing those languages is kind of an unusual experience.

I think fisheries officers etc might hear Sechelt on occasion, but I
doubt immigration officials do; as for customs, there's no customs booth
at Gibsons _yet_ ;-)

>
>         I'm very interested in the recordings I've heard of BC Jargon.
>         They're all or nearly all spoken by Indians, and have a sound pattern
>         recognizably closer to what's represented in the "ahnkuttie"/"White"/
>         whatchamacallit CJ books.  This is still only in the educated-guess
>         stage for me, but I suspect this represents a pretty well-crystallized
>         North Coast CJ.  By that impromptu label I mean the coastal areas of
>         Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the Georgia Strait, northern
>         Vancouver Island, the Fraser River, and some others.
>
> Eastern Washington comes to mind as a similar sounding area.

I think it's probably at least as different as Kamloops Wawa and your
North Coast Jargon are in respect to each other, but as far as
intelligibility goes it wouldn't/doesn't really matter; I didn't get a
good chance to hear much of Bernice and Dan using the Jargon, though, as
I didn't make it down in time for any Friday sessions, so maybe there's
even more of a similarity in sound than I'd think at this point - I
think a binding principle of all the "Outer Jargon(s)" is that
prononciation doesn't matter as much as using the words clearly does.  I
have some more thoughts on this but have to pack for a Friday afternoon
flight to Calgary; hmm doubt I'll find much in the way of Wawa history
there but maybe I'll have a look on Saturday if I get the time (which I
may not); so will brave these testy waters when I get back sometime from
Monday onwards.....


>         In many ways this variety of CJ looks systematically different from
>         (let's call it) Columbia CJ.  The latter would include perhaps areas
>         from Grays Harbor through Chehalis and Cowlitz territories, thence
>         upriver to Wishram and Wasco lands, and downstream to the mouth of the
>         Columbia and southerly to say Tillamook areas.
>
> I question this, because I don't think that the folks at Yakama sounded
> like the folks at GR. And if I understood Bernice and Dan, I think that
> the folks there sounded more like the folks at Yakama, who didn't sound
> that different from the folks on Puget Sound. But my memories all date
> from the early 1970s back; and I hadn't heard spoken jargon after my
> mom died in the late 1970s, except for my father's popping up with some
> a couple of years ago.

I'm not sure about the Wishram and Wasco being part of the Columbia CJ
corpus; that is if "Columbia CJ" is to be defined as the same as GR; the
actual historic range of the GR form would be useful to establish; was
it indeed in use in the Chehalis and coastal Oregon communities, or in
the lower Columbia-Williamette core in particular?  Above or below the
Dalles, etc.?  I'd venture (but only guessing) that the upper Columbia's
prononciation was more connected with that of GR=style, and that it had
a slightly different vocabulary from Puget Sound-Fraser/Georgia, said
vocabulary having commonalities with GR; but in verbal style it seems
more similar to Puget Sound-Fraser/Georgia, which despite differing
phonologies is why a Puget Sound person could easily be understood in
Yakima or Warm Springs or, for that matter, Kamloops - or GR, for that
matter.  Those "k's" could all be made differently if you were a
Kwakwala speaker or a Nez Perce; but the word would have remained and
been recognized as the same.....


> It is possible that my memories have become flawed over time, but I really
> think that the only way an objective determination of dialectical areas can
> really be made is with some sort of physical measurement of speech.

Which is why finding the remnants in the outer regions and understanding
them seems very important; although again this doesn't make Jargon
usages outside the pale of the historic prononciations any less valid as
Jargon per se; since many non-native historical speakers of it knew it
as a second language, whether their phonology was Nootka or Swedish - or
both.
>
> Are there CJ recordings from all areas? I have been thinking that it might
> be possible using Fourier transforms to try and compare sounds from the
> different areas to see if there are distinctive, quantifiable physical
> differences in the sounds made in different areas.

Ouch.  We have a mathematician in the house  ;-)  A randomization module
for local specializations, perhaps?

>
> My own personal interest is in learning to speak the GR dialect, and then
> continuing my study of ahnkuttie. GR is more Creolized, and more expressive,
> so it is the dialect that would be more challenging to learn and use.
> What about further south, into Northern California? Are there recordings of
> CJ speakers from down south, say circa Umpqua and Grants Pass?

Some of Jacobs' sources were Modoc and Klamath, but I think these were
living in GR-speaking communities, weren't they?  I'm curious as to the
Alaskan-Atlin usage, which apparently is still "out there" somewhat, and
the ways in which Jargon (-French) words have been adapted into
languages such as Kwakwala and Nuxalk....

>
>         This is just an informal characterization of the well-documented
>         CJ-speaking areas; a third distinct variety would seem to have
>         centered on Kamloops, British Columbia, if only because Father Le Jeune
>         did his work there.  His Chinuk was perhaps idiosyncratic, perhaps
>         more-or-less representative of how indigenous people used it in
>         interior BC (I suspect the latter, for various reasons).

I tink 'ees frannsh waz a bigg heenfluence on KW
spellings/prononciations; I'll have to check to see if it's "hyas" or
"aias" etc. in Lytton/Lillooet/Spences Bridge.  But I think the sounds
found in KW Jargon are not quite the same as what you might have found
in the Lillooet, Cariboo, or the Chilcotin, other than by way of
influence of St. Joseph's School survivors and the Kamloops diocese in
general.

A pity that Teit or Hill-Tout didn't make much note of the Jargon as
found in their districts of study, where surely it was in use and they
must have known it.  Something tells me that Teit had something against
it, of the sort where the Jargon wasn't considered by him to be as
important as the older languages, so he paid it less mind.  It's also a
pity that Lunden-Brown didn't record his many conversations with native
people and native leaders in the Jargon he had them in rather than the
English he published in; so far as I know, that is (Barbara?).

>         Lots of fascinating exploration of CJ remains to be done.  It's good
>         to see the renaissance of serious interest in the language in the last
>         very few years.
>
> It would be better to see a revival happen, something that is very
> difficult without adequate instructional materials.

Hence my suggestion for a FAQ for the list, which could be a useful
resource for all as well as an overview of all the issues discussed;
history, phonology (or lack thereof), etc.  FAQs take a long time to
develop, but can be a useful exercise for regulars to conduct; from what
I understand it's best to exchange drafts outside the list so as to not
provoke confusion (and discord), and work it up jointly.  Maybe the
first thing to do is to compile all the basic questions, and to provide
basic answers; plus references to all more elaborate issues and
bibligraphies, etc.......

MC