Grand Ronde spellings and others for CJ -Reply

[Tony Johnson]

kanawi-Laksta,

I have a few general comments regarding recent discussions on our list.
Forgive the variety of topics I seldom have the time to respond.

As I have stated previously I do not believe that there were forms of
Chinuk-wawa that were unintelligible to others.  I acknowledge that
there were distinctions, but I believe that Chinuk was mutually
intelligible.  Certainly there were many variations in vocabulary,
idiomatic expression, etc., but not in the base intelligilbility of the
language.  I believe the most important difference, and that which has
led to this recent discussion of dialect, is the varying abilities of
individuals to properly write the language as spoken by both Indians and
non-Indians.

I have had the chance to read and listen to transcripts and tape
recordings of Native speakers of Chinuk-wawa from various locations in
the NW.  As a person who is conversant in Chinuk I have found all of
these to be intelligible and in most cases quite similar to the Chinuk
of Grand Ronde and the Lower Columbia River.  The age of these materials
vary as widely as their location of origin yet the intelligibility
remains.  I believe it was the inability of individuals to correctly
represent the language as spoken, by themselves as well as Natives, that
has encouraged this confustion.

I should clarify that in Grand Ronde we acknowledge numerous variations
in pronunciation of our Chinuk.  However it always is mutually
intellibible.

Regarding the development of our Chinuk orthography:

The recommendations as made by me regarding orthography is based on our
form of the language.  I believe, as many Chinuk speakers have stated
from outside of our region, that the most expressive form of Chinuk was
utilized in the Lower Columbia river area.  This fact and that we are
actively using the language makes Grand Ronde's contribution to this
discussion valuable.

An orthography that acknowledges the  influence of non-Native sounds
allows proper representation of the full language as spoken today.  This
does not prevent us from noting, or even speaking, the language as
spoken with less of this influence.  The need for this orthography is
also apparent because of the horrible corruptions that stem from the
dictionaries of Chinuk that were previously published.  Even our own
elders who have written the language, with a English based alphabet,
could easily be misunderstood by those not familiar with spoken Chinuk.
This is why a phonetic orthography is convenient to teaching.  I'm using
the "what you see is what you get" approach.  Despite this our prefered
forms of words within our lexicon are often represented more
phonemically than phonetically.

Some of the best older speakers of Chinuk did exhibit the limited vowel
inventory as represented by our older languages.  However, others who
were speakers of their older languages spoke Chinuk as influenced by
Non-Indian languages.

An interesting note is that while Melville Jacobs did not mark these
distinctions in his printed texts he did note them in the original
versions in his field notebooks.

Finally, the argument that there is no proper pronunciation or grammar
of Chinuk is alarming.  We should be careful to note that there are
variations within the language, but it should also be noted that there
was an ideal form that Native Chinuk speakers throughout the NW were
striving for.  I don't believe we all have to speak or write Chinuk the
same, but we should strive to speak good Chinuk.

Lush pus mesayka munk k!Ilapay c!em khapa nayka.


LaXayEm--Tony