Variant of <tamahnawis>; musings on sources of Kamloops Jargon

At 12:40 PM 9/23/98 -0700, David Robertson wrote:
>
>L~us^ san, kanawi l~aksta,
>
>Whew!  Can you make that out?  I think I'll follow Tony J's way of =
writing
>ChinUk Wawa by email from now on instead.=20

Because I was running in and out sorting out things with the facility
management, I never did get the typographical preferences used in Grande
Ronde as were being spelled out by Tony that first afternoon.  If you
wouldn't mind, please transcribe and post the full set (ASCII and
otherwise)........

>
>A friend has loaned me "Witchcraft and Sorcery of the Native American
>Peoples", edited by Deward E. Walker, Jr.  (University of Idaho Press,
>1989).  In it is a contribution from William W. Elmendorf, excellent as
>always, titled "Northwest Coast: Skokomish".
>
>Now, the Skokomish reservation people's "native" language is =
Tuwaduxqucid
>=3D Twana Salishan.  As you may or may not know from the language's =
name,
>it's one of those NW languages that lack nasal sounds like "m", "n", =
"ng". =20
>
>So it's with surprise that I read on page 94 ("Account 4") the word
>/tamanamis/ with accent on the second /a/.  You'll see that it's the =
well
>- known Chinook Jargon word <tamahnawis>, and indeed Elmendorf uses it =
in
>the appropriate context.  ("When the doctor comes to diagnose a sick
>person he may see some other doctor's /tamanamis/ inside that sick =
man.")
>
>Two things that interest me here: =20
>	/tamanamis/ has nasals in it, contrary to the regular sound laws
>	of Tuwaduxqucid.  However, if this language works like
>	Dxwl at s^ucid =3D Lushootseed Coast Salishan, nasals are allowed as=20
>	"expressive" or "affective" sounds.
>
>	/tamanamis/ has a nasal /m/ for the original Jargon word's sound
>	/w/.  This is evidently not a mistake in Elmendorf's data; he=20
>	repeatedly uses the same form with /mis/ at the end of it.
>
>It would be swell to know whether any of you know of similar cases that
>have happened in the borrowing of Jargon words into our region's
>languages. =20

Kind of interesting, even for us non-linguists.  I can't remember the
details of the stuff Terry read out for us (I think it was Terry)
concerning the Spanish and Hawaiian lexical connections to the word in
question - the possibility that there is some kind of connection to the
Hawaiian word "mana" seems quite plausible.  What did the lot of you
professionals think about the theory Terry was reading from (I think it =
was
Charles Lillard's)......any comments?

>On a sort of similar note, I see in a "Hymn to St. Joseph" in Jargon
>printed in the "Kamloops Wawa" that the song has the words:
>	"Dret ayu liyam tiki tolo nsayka"
>	i.e. "The Devil [liyam] badly wants to win us."
>
>The form I've usually seen for "Devil" is <lejaub>.  So maybe this form
>/liyam/ shows by its form that it came into Kamloops Jargon via the =
Coast.
>Compare also the fairly frequent /latam/ and variations on it, meaning
>"table".  These come from a French form of <la table> evidently heard by
>NW natives as /latab/ and automatically changed by speakers of the
>nasalless languages to /latam/.  =20

Which page in the Kamloops Wawa is that on? - never mind, I think I can
find the Hymn to St. Joseph in my copy (it's in my van, which is at the
shop tonight).  Is what you're quoting from the shorthand script or is it
written as-is?  Could be a hand-typo; "y" and "j" are sort of
similar.....the shorthand would only have a vowel-squiggle for the "y", =
but
would have a curve with a dot in it for a "j"........

>
>Several other features of Kamloops Jargon as I've seen it recorded by =
the
>fathers there have made me think that the Salishan-populated Fraser =
River
>corridor may have been the primary route by which the Wawa reached the
>Interior of BC. =20

Um, no.  The history of the region didn't quite work that way......the
=46rench voyageurs were long in contact with the lower Columbia via the
Kamloops country from New Caledonia (Prince George and northwards) and =
the
Yellowhead (Tete Jaune Cache) - that is to say, via the Cariboo Plateau =
and
North Thompson, and thence down the Okanagan from the Kamloops area; also
from the East Kootenay (and the Yellowhead) via the upper Columbia (this
last the most-travelled).  While there would certainly have been
native-based transmission of the main stock of the Jargon via the network
of peoples connecting the Plateau to the Coast (as much via the Lillooet
lakes as via the Canyon), the French loan-words in the Kamloops Wawa are
just as likely to have been in use up there almost contemporaneously as
they were adopted by the lower Columbia native peoples (if not =
before).....

I'm not saying that the Stl'atl'imx and Nlakapamux (Lillooets and
Thompsons) didn't have contact with the Halkomelem-speaking peoples of =
the
Lower Mainland, or that they didn't trade words back and forth (as indeed
they must have).  But if it's a question of the fur companies being
involved in the establishment of the French roots of the lexicon =
(remember
that the missionary influence came _much_ later), then the Fraser is the
_least_ likely of all routes, as it was physically the most difficult.
Even the HBC's initial route connecting Kamloops to the Coast was the =
Hope
Brigade Trail, which fords the Fraser just north of present-day Yale and
climbs over the crest of the Cascades into the upper Coldwater (the =
Nicola
basin); the Fraser Canyon was relatively impassable; the HBC's other
preferred (but not much-used route, at least until 1858) was the Lakes
route via Lillooet, Old Lillooet (Pemberton-Mt. Currie) and =
Douglas........

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

The thunderbolt steers all things.
                           - Herakleitos