turtle

[Linda Fink]

Glad to see you come out of the woodwork, Henry! Eula was teaching small
children jargon at the same time she was teaching us older and slower
learners. I didn't know when she started teaching the kids. She used to
invite us older folk to the recitations her young students gave. But she
started her dictionary because of you, Henry. At least, that's what she told
us and I know you won't contradict Eula. :-)  Her dictionary is what we used
in class. But she must have told us about the Thomas dictionary also because
I went to Jim Hosley's, at Jim's Trading Post here in Grand Ronde, and
bought one. He had a bunch of them. Still has some if anyone is interested.

It's too bad Dellmore Croy is no longer living now that CJ is becoming
popular. Eula said he learned far more of the jargon than she or her sisters
did because he was living at home when the others were gone in the years
when the parents were speaking more and more jargon. He grew up basically
bilingual.

I remember that turtle and rabbit story now! Eula told it to us in jargon
(and had to translate for us slower and older students, even though it was
just like the English version we've all heard so many times.) And yes, I
think she did have the accent on the first syllable. I found another place
where it was written more clearly. (Plus I found stronger glasses.)

I love hearing your experiences with Eula, Henry. She was, as far as I'm
concerned, one of the finest and most fun people who ever lived. So please
come out of lurk mode more often!

Linda Fink

At 12:23 PM 2/9/1999 -0800, you wrote:
>Dear Linda.  You're giving me entirely too much credit!  Eula was, or had
>already been teaching Jargon under a Title IV grant when I began visiting
>her around 1979-80.  She often consulted her sisters Velma, Ila, and
>Martha, so it can be said that they were reviving the Jargon of their
>earlier family life together.  Their father and mother, John B. and Hattie
>Hudson, used Jargon as well as English at home, and (together with the
>Hudsons' foster son Dellmore Croy) all grew up knowing it.  Eula was the
>youngest, but having her father's knack for language was not shy about
>speaking.  While Dellmore was known locally for speaking Jargon at the
>drop of a hat, the sisters by and large had been neglecting it until Eula
>landed that Title IV grant (originally sometime in the 70s I believe, long
>before I came on the scene).  They were using the Thomas dictionary, but
>Eula always took care to pronounce words as she remembered them rather
>than as they were written by Thomas.  She used her own rather
>idiosyncratic adaptation of an English dictionary phonetic alphabet to
>spell the words as she remembered her parents pronouncing them.
>
>Where I can claim some credit is in teaching Eula to read Jacobs's
>phonetic transcription.  She caught on quickly, and had no difficulty
>reading the Jargon texts Jacobs had recorded in the 1930s from her father
>and from Victoria Howard (whose second husband, Eustace Howard, was John
>B. Hudson's first cousin).  That word for turtle, I believe, is from one
>of those texts:  the story of a race between mudturtle and rabbit.  I
>don't have it with me, but it seems to me the word is 'iLEqwa (stress on
>first syllable, although there is somewhere in the story where it is
>also iLE'qwa:  variable stress placement characterizes many Jargon words,
>the "default" position however usually being on the first syllable).
>
>Another Henry
>
>
>