Loss of Old Chinook language (fwd)

[David Robertson]

 *VISIT the archives of the CHINOOK jargon and the SALISHAN & neighboring*
		    <=== languages lists, on the Web! ===>
	   http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/salishan.html
	   http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/chinook.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 11:22:53 -0500
From: Dell Hymes <dhh4d at virginia.edu>
To: David Robertson <drobert at tincan.tincan.org>
Subject: Re: Ma-iskEm ukuk, pus ma-nanich "Las-kEmtEks kanawi-Ikta" Las-buk!

>(This is what you get if you read the "experts'" books! --)
>
>George Fuller wrote "A history of the Northwest (with special emphasis on
>the Inland Empire".  It was published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1966.
>
>>>From page 40:  "The [Old Chinook] language was utterly impossible to the
>whites, and by 1850 the young Chinooks were discarding it for Chehalis and
>the jargon."  Assuming this were true, how would the shift to a couple of
>lowere-status languages have been motivated?
>
>A page of doggerel about the Jargon follows, containing this gem:  "It is
>a mistake to think that [the Indians] ordinarily used signs.  They like to
>talk, and they did not lack words."  Ugh!  :-)
>
>One factor must have been the depletion of population and intermarriage.
>Charles Cultee, the source through B oas of what isk  nown of both
>Shoalwater chinook and Kathlamet Chinook oral literature and grammar, was
>married to a Chehalis speaking wife and spoke Chehalis himself.
Dell Hymes
>
> *VISIT the archives of the CHINOOK jargon and the SALISHAN & neighboring*
>		    <=== languages lists, on the Web! ===>
>	   http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/salishan.html
>	   http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/chinook.html