Other questions

[Francisc Czobor]

Hayu masi, Dave, pus mayka kilapay wawa !

For the CW equivalent for "roof", I've thought exactly to the two possibilities suggested by you: borrowing from English ("ruf") or a paraphrase (I thought to something like "haws yaka sahali sitkum" = "the upper part of the house", or "laplash sahali kupa haws" = "the boards on top of the house")

I knew the expression "wik kata (pus)" for inability (to do something), from the KW excerpts posted by you to this List (it was already included in my self-made / self-use big CW-Romanian dictionary, where I gather together all the information available on CW from any accessible source).

Regarding "can / be able (to do something)", I thought the most appropriate would be a construct with kEmtEks, inspired by expressions like that attested in Gibbs:
(of a horse) hyas yakka kumtuks cooley, he can run fast (literally, he knows well to run).

Masi weXt,
Francisc

David Robertson <ddr11 at COLUMBIA.EDU> wrote:
Good questions, Francisc. As usual I will try to answer with reference to
the Kamloops Wawa universe.

On Mon, 16 May 2005 07:35:55 -0400, Francisc Czobor
wrote:

>1. I didn't find in any source CW words for such house parts like "roof"
>and "wall", although they must have been, since both Native and European-
>style houses had walls and roofs.
>I found only a word for "chimney", it seems to be of French origin, but the
>spelling is very dubious: la-shum-ma-na (Blanchet, 1869?), la-shum-a-na
>(Stuart, 1865?, "a corruption of French la cheminee"), le shimney (Good,
>1880).
>So how could we say "roof" and "wall" in CW?

I've seen "wal" in KW, as well as "siling" for a ceiling. I also think
I've seen "ruf", and it would sound normal to paraphrase this if desired:
e.g. "sahali kopa haws", literally on top of a building.


>3. In CW there is the word XawqwEL (howkwutl) for the inability or
>impossibility to do something. But is there a word or expression also for
>the opposite meaning?
>I didn't find so far any CW word/expression meaning "can", "be able", "it's
>possible", or similar.

Note that K.W. also uses "wik kata (pus)" for inability. There I also
sometimes see "skukum pus" for being able/strong enough to do something.
As well, you'll sometimes see "komtaks" (kumtux), literally to know how to
do something or "aiak" (hyak), literally to quickly/soon do something. Yet
another option in some situations is to use no word at all; for "I can talk
Lillooet" you might say "naika wawa Liluit".

--Dave R

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