"Shoreline"

At 11:14 PM 9/13/98 EDT, lisapeppan at juno.com wrote:
>Say, got one I need to toss past some fresh eyes.
>
>My kid brother, in putting together a Cd of his bands music ("pop-rock
>with a rhythmic flair"), got a bunch of us together to do a drum track
>and on a whim he decide to call us who drummed "The Shoreline Tribal
>Council".  Then he thought and decided he would like to use the Chinook
>Jargon to give things a different flavor; he's used Jargon for a couple
>lines in a song he wrote. =20
>
>The "Shoreline" in the "Shoreline Tribal Council" is the name of a =
school
>district and most recently the name of a new city/township north of
>Seattle, within the Shoreline School District.  In the context of the=20
>school district, there were two high school, Shoreline and Shorecrest
>(and the third, Shorewood, opened in 1977), and the school district
>itself is bounded on the east by Lake Washington and to the west by =
Puget
>Sound.
>
>So, to cut to the chase, he sends me email asking:
>
>>How do you say "shoreline" in Chinook Jargon?

Nearest I can figure would be "illahee kopa chuck" (the land by the =
water)
- or maybe "mahtlinnie", which means "offshore" or "keep off" but if used
on land means "towards the water" (mahtwillie is the opposite).  Given =
its
double entendre, "mathlinnie" might be a funky drum-band name......

>Instead of answering him, I took him my Edward Harper Thomas book and he
>chose the word Mahtlinnie.  Since this all went on on the day we laid
>down the drum track, I nodded and said that sounded good.

Gee - I hadn't even scrolled down to see that and there it is!

>Then I got to thinking about it, and took a look myself and found two
>other words that could also work.
>
>So.  Mr Thomas' book says this about all three words...=20
>
>Mahtlinnie (maht-lin-nie): Off shore; out at sea.  (Used two ways: if in
>a boat it is then to keep off; if on land it is to go toward the water.)
>
>Mahtwillie (mah-twil-lie): In shore, shoreward, on land, towards the
>interior (The opposite of mahtlinnie.)
>=20
>Nauits (nau-its) Off shore; on the stream, the sea beach
>
>To my mind, I think perhaps that Nauits might be a better word, mostly
>because it looks like it would apply to fresh (Lake Washington) OR salt
>water (Puget Sound).

Why wouldn't mathlinnie?  The only way to distinguish any of these words
between saltwater and freshwater would be, AFAIK, "mahtlinnie kopa
saltchuck" (offshore on the sea) or "mahtlinnie kopa [tsee]chuck" =
(offshore
on the lake/river).  The on-land syntax I'm not sure of but I get the
feeling it would be "illahee mahtlinnie" or "mahtlinnie illahee"......

>I thought about just plain beach, which is where I found Nauits.

Nauits seems more like a Nuu-chah-nulth or Salishan word than a Chinookan
one; what's the linguistic attribution, if there is one?  It also seems =
to
refer to both land and water as much as "mahtlinnie"........


Mike Cleven
ironmtn at bigfoot.com
http://members.home.net/ironmtn/

The thunderbolt steers all things.
                           - Herakleitos