Phonological system of Mitchif ======>some CJ words

[Mike Cleven]

David Robertson wrote:
>
> Yann pi khanawi lhaksta,
>
> Your point is a good one:  The forms of French words in Mitchif are quite
> a lot like those of French words in ChInuk Wawa.  This is no coincidence.

I imagine the same must be true for the French loan-words in Sekani,
Nuxalk, Wet'su-we'ten (Carrier), etc.  As noted in another post, it
might be interesting to discover which of such loan-words were inducted
into their respective languages directly from French, or from the
Jargon; it's probably a pretty clearly separate pair of lists.  Another
lexicographical issue worth considering is that it might be helpful to
distinguish between the words that were obviously brought to the Jargon
from Metis French (mostly trade goods and words for livestock) and those
that were introduced by the various fathers.  Ecclesiastical terms
nearly all come from the latter, except perhaps such basic concepts as
lacloa and invented nativisms such as saghalie tyee  whose origins may
have simply come from the voyageurs in campfire discussions with their
native hosts/guides about their beliefs.  I don't think the fathers
added much to the Jargon other than terms related to the faith; maybe
someone can think of a later-on French borrowing into the Jargon that
isn't ecclesiastical, although I can't think of one.  By the time Durieu
and LeJeune and company were active, the main non-native influence on
Jargon was English, the use of which was of course beginning to
supersede the Jargon; there would be little point in French loan-words
added in this period; English loan-words would be more likely.  It would
seem to me, to, that the later 19th Century church-run promotion of
Chinook affected mostly only British Columbia; or were the Oblates
active south of the border, too?

Another point to consider, however, is that there seem to have been
French missionary contacts in the region long before the declaration of
the colonies and the territories and the boundary.  I've heard of
Jesuits visiting the region in the 1830s; can't remember exactly where -
Puget Sound or the lower Columbia, I think - and there's that
Napoleonic-era account of French priests (Jesuits maybe) on board a
scurvy-wracked Russian trade vessel moored in English Bay to trade with
the Squamish; about 1810 or so.  It's probable that various other
vessels had missionaries on board (Catholic or otherwise) and their
visits and journeys went unrecorded, unless they're collecting dust in
the archives of their Order (as so many Oblate archives from BC history
happen to be, somewhere back at the Canadian motherhouse in Ottawa).  So
there _were_ other French contacts than the Metis during the fur trade
era; just who and where won't ever be fully known.

It's interesting to consider the scattered documentation of the early
history of the NW; what may be in Russian, Spanish or even French
archives.  One historic document that would be wonderful to have turn
up, if it weren't on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean somewhere down by
Australia, would be the logs of the French scientific explorer La
Perouse, who cruised the coast in the days of Capts. Barkley and
Vancouver.  The logs of the Spanish expedition vessel, the Aranzazu
(actually a huge converted warship), would also be interesting but I
don't think they exist in English translation; and it's strange that
there is not much in the way of written records from Fort San Miguel
(the Spanish fort at Nootka Sound), the Spanish being the assiduous
bureaurats and imperial servants that they were; I suspect there may be
more concerning this episode hidden in archives San Blas or Mexico City
or even still in Madrid. I've actually written the Royal Navy Archives
by e-mail to inquire about any information or artifacts they have
concerning the RN's Barkely Sound Jargon, but have never received a
response.  I don't know enough Alaskan history to know how much archival
material might exist from the Russian era, but I suspect that Russian
America company records and files wound up in some state archive in
Moscow; there's an extensive directory of such resources by imperial and
soviet department, but I've found no reference to the Russian America
Company monopoly.


>
> A small addition, though:  Peter Bakker in "A Language of our Own" also
> discusses these sound-rules in the environment of strictly Francophone
> speech areas in Canada.

I haven't read Bakker's book la francophonie canadienne - I'm sure it's
very interesting, and I'd like to know the specific differences between
the various Canadian/North American dialects of French.  Saskais (also
saskatchais) and manitobaine and nord-ontario I'd especially like to
know more about.  The spoken French I manage to spew was learned from
saguenards and outouais who had moved to BC, mostly; some were
franco-ontarien, a few acadien, plus quite a few Montrealers I've known
over the years.  Most Quebec-published dictionaries do not touch on the
other dialects that much, except maybe acadien and its close cousin
cajun; the attitude in Quebec is that ontarien and Prairie French
dialects have already been assimilated; I think there is talk of a
western Canadian French encyclopaedia/dictionary that Enclopaedia
Canadiana (publ. Edmonton AB) was talking about doing......

Considering the hefty presence of French in the Jargon, and obviously in
the commercial workforce of the  frontier-era (especially pre-colonial,
pre-territorial) Northwest, it's almost worth considering that the
French spoken in those days in our region probably had its own stamp;
words and expressions that had developed in the company patois west of
the Rockies, some from native terms others from the mix of languages
spoken within the Company itself.  Given Gov. Simpson's account of the
raucous chatter of the Kanaka-French crews that brought him down the
lower Columbia to Fort Vancouver, it's a pity we don't have more
knowledge of the company vernacular and its various adaptations by the
voyageurs and the kanakas and others; not the Jargon, mind you, but
maybe we could consider it a company form of the Jargon; to me it seems
obvious that the Kanakas would have mingled the Jargon quite freely with
their native Hawaiian, and the same would be true of the English and
French speakers within the company/companies; the degree to which the
Jargon was used by Chinese labourers and cooks in this period is
unclear.  The "anglo" component of the company was actually heavily
Scottish, although not as particularly Orcadian (from Orkney) as had
been the case in the previous century and a half of the company's
existence; once the Company came west of the Rockies  what use of
Orcadian or Gaelic there might have been before does not seem apparent
in the Columbia-New Caledonia colonies; Gov. Sinclair himself was Scots,
of course, but like all gentlemen of those days wouldn't think of making
his records in Gaelic even if he knew the tongue.  Given the apparent
influence of Metis/Prairie French per se upon the Jargon, it might be
worth considering the English loanwords from the perspective of a
Scots-dialect origin, rather than from standard English.  The easiest
such possible example I can think of is hoow Jargon users would
pronounce "house" - Tony, Grande Ronders?  Is it with the long drawl-y
American "ha-owse" as the dipthong, or the Canadian/Scots "ho-oose";
this is of course the famous word/dipthong that Americans identify
Canadians with, even though we Canadians can't really hear ourselves
saying "oose".  I know that native-accented English in BC often has an
Irish lilt because of family and church influence; I'm wondering if the
English loan-words in Grande Ronde have any resemblance more to a
British/Scottish accent than to the American way of saying things......I
know this is "reaching" but it's an interesting fishing expedition if
you actually caught anything.....

>
> In other words, both Mitchif and Canadian French are of interest when
> investigating the genealogies of ChInuk Wawa words.  In the case of
> the common western North American English "coulee", though, the story one
> finds will be different from that of ChInuk Wawa /kuri/ or /kuli/.  The
> former derives from a root completely distinct from the root of the
> latter.  But there may at a relatively late stage have arisen some
> confusion between the two in certain regions.
>
> In passing:  "Coolie" is from Urdu, i.e. the Muslim variant of Hindi, and
> in casual linguistic terms "can not" be related to either of the above
> either etymologically or sociohistorically.

I was only speculative about what I guess might be called a
"sociohistoric" misapprehension of the word, if that was actually what
had happened; such that it would have been a noun perceived as a verb,
meaning not "worker" but "hurry up"; quite a reach, except for other
strange-borrowings like mahsh/marcher, although that at least remained a
verb during the transition.  I know it's a reach, but it could make
sense in a weird sort of way; I'm not saying that it does.

I'll do some checking and see what the Michif/Metis French imperative
for "to run" is.....

Later

Mike C