Jewitt etc

Henry Kammler henry.kammler at STADT-FRANKFURT.DE
Wed Jan 13 11:49:44 UTC 1999


uH?atlHasuu.

Nuuchaa'nulh ("Nootka") is of course one of the major sources of CJ vocabulary. When we consider Jewitt's captivity narrative and the Spanish reports from West Vancouver Island it appears to me that at that time and in that area a sort of "trade Nootka" was spoken. I would flatly call it *something in between* "proper Nootka" and CJ, or maybe a regionally diverging dialect of CJ but more probably just simplified "Nootka". This is what most of the glosses in Jewitt and Mozin~o reflect. 
Derek G. Smith, editor of a 1974 edition of Jewitt's "Narrative", maintains that most of the native words given by Jewitt were CJ. Well, somehow this is right, because most of them became part of CJ vocabulary but they are definitely "Nootka". The native sentences scattered in Jewitt are fully inflected "Nootka", recognizable inspite of his awkward rendering.  

Klootz-mah, woman.  [Mozin~o also has a word with no -n at the end,
	clutz-ma = mujer.  Did the final -n in "klootchman / lhuchmen"
	come in due to interference from English "man"?]
The original word is [luucsma] (l is always voiceless "l"/lateral fricative; c is "ts"), I cannot think of a Nootkan source of -n in klootchman. 
The root of luucsma is lhuuch- [luc^-] ([c^] is Englich ch), like in [luc^m'up] "elder sister" or [luc^Haa] "proposing for marriage". This could be the source of "tch" in klootchman.

Moo-watch, bear.  [! Mozin~o:  mo-huec = venado = deer.]
This means "deer" of course. It is an interesting case. Southern Nuuchaa'nul (Barkley Sound) maintain that the Northern speakers borrowed this from CJ. The Barkley Sound word is !aatush [!aatus^]{[!] is a pharyngeal stop} and consider it the more ancient one although they use both words. The closely related Diitid'aa (Nitinat language) has, according to its sound inventory, buwach [buwac^]. Northern Nootkans have only muwach, and Maquinna's people at Yuquot came to be the Moachat/Muwach'at [muwac^'atH], "people of the deer" after they had merged with the formerly independent members of a tribal confederacy at Nootka Sound. Thus "Nootka" is a possible source of muwach in CJ.

I-ya-hish, much.  [Related case:  Hy-o, ten.]
Sorry, these are not related. 
I-ya-ish means "ist is much" {phonemic writing: aya?is^; aya = "much"}.
Hy-o is [Hayuu] and means "ten"{[H] represents an "h" spoken back in the throat, like Arabic Hamsa}


Sie-yah, sky.  [Mozin~o:  Nas = cielo =sky; but saya-cha = cosa alta =
	high thing, and sa-ya = lejos = far.]
Mozin~o is right, [n'aas] means light, sky and god. Jewitt's "sie-yah" is the root [sayaa] = high, far away. sayaach'a [sayaac^'a] means "high above" or "supreme", like the famous trader Tom Sayachapis ([sayaac^'apis] = "standing high above the beach"). As a German on Vancouver Island I am a [sayaa?atH], a person from far away.


Pug-xitl = soplar = to blow.  [Related to puk-puk?  To kokshut?  Note that
Spanish "x" of that time was usually employed as a "sh" sound when writing
Native American words.]
x = sh, like in many colonial documents from New Spain. I am not quite sure about pug- (no books at hand), I think this is [p'uks^itl]. -shitl is a very common verbal suffix (variants are -chitl and -kwitl, like in p'achitl [p'ac^itl] "to give away on an occasion").

Henry



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