Swans in Hawaiian

[Mike Cleven]

At 01:15 PM 1/15/99 -0800, David Robertson wrote:
>Klahowya, Nadja,
>
>It looks pretty sure that there's no connection between the words for
>"swan" in the two languages.  In fact, someone happened to bring up the CJ
>word "kehloke" etc. on this list about 4-5 months ago, and we had some
>superbly interesting notes about it from pretty convincing folks.  (E.g.
>Dell Hymes, who's one of the few living linguists to have studied the
>Chinookan languages with the remaining speakers.)  The upshot was that
>it's definitely a native Chinookan word.

I'm tempted to forward a couple of these responses to the
Kanakamaoli-allies listserv, but I wanted to be sure about the Hawaiian
term for "swan" first.......the other comment is that, since bird names in
Jargon tend to be onomatopaeic, it could be that any resemblance between
the Hawaiian and Jargon terms may be due to phonological
accident/coincidence, rather than to any transmission from the NW to
Hawaii.......(there's a raging debate about this latter subject in
sci.archaeology at the moment, but it concerns supposed connection between
Kwakwa'kawakw and Hawaiian, not Jargon and Hawaiian).

>
>Anyone on the list still have those posts?  That was before we began using
>LISTSERV, so they're not in our archives on the Website.  My saved copies
>were accidentally deleted as I tried to put 'em onto disks!

I have the whole archive.  Do you want me to send it as a zip or something,
or just forward/redirect the whole wham-dam-doodle to you?

>
>It is quite remarkable how few Hawaiian words entered the Jargon.  Does
>this speak of the status of the Kanakas in the NW?  BTW, I'm tempted to
>say that "Owyhee" / "Hawaii" entered the Jargon, or came into NW usage via
>the Jargon.  Haven't I seen it in at least one dictionary?  (*Sigh*, gotta
>go through all those xeroxes again!)  :-)


It was also used in English of the same period, especially among mariners.
Given that "h" is often used in spellings of the period (English and
Jargon) to signify the glottal stop, this is a pretty accurate way of
writing what we today put as "Hawaii".....which is, after all, pron.
hawai'i......

HBC Gov. Simpson's diary concerning the languages spoken by his crew on the
Lower Columbia seem to indicate that the Hawaiians used their own language,
heavily flavoured by the Jargon, English, French and whatever other tidbits
they'd picked up along the way.  But when they spoke to a non-Kanaka, they
must have kept to the accepted Jargon, rather than their own versions.
It's really sad, I think, that none of the Hawaiians who lived in the NW at
the time kept _their_ diary with their own comments about the Wawa.  This
gets me wondering if the Kanaka families who stayed on in BC kept up their
familiarity with the Jargon, and if any family records somewhere might have
some notes about it, perhaps concerning a "Kanaka Jargon".  We know that
the Voyageurs used the Wawa a certain way, various native peoples in other
ways, and the English and the Bostons used it differently as well; so it
seems logical that the Kanakas would have had their own version,
too.....one that didn't get recorded, unfortunately.....