[Fwd: Re: We're seeing a key problem: Lack of explicit connectionbetween        "ahnkuttie" and Grand Ronde materials]

[Dave Robertson]

Just in case this didn't reach the list yet...Dave...
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: We're seeing a key problem: Lack of explicit connectionbetween  
            "ahnkuttie" and Grand Ronde materials
Date: 26 Sep 2000 11:45:26 -0700
From: zenk at uswestmail.net
To: tuktiwawa at NETSCAPE.NET

Dave and all,

If running is what's doing it, keep it up.  Lots of interesting issues are
coming up lately.

About which I'll pick only one for now:  the present form (or presently
projected form) of the dictionary.  When we started, we had indeed intended
to include etymologies.  We had also intended to include examples of usage
(some may recall the tentative sample with several entries + examples we
handed out at last year's lu7lu).  What happened more recently is that I
became aware, oh around the beginning of the summer, that at the rate we were
going there would be a Chinuk Wawa dictionary in about 10 years, if we worked
hard enough. The idea behind the present form of the dictionary was to strip
it down to just the basics:  words and phrasal words/idioms.  Once we have
those compiled into a list (that is, once the sample we handed out at this
year's lu7lu has been expanded into its logically complete form), we will at
least have something useful for reference purposes.  With that as a base, we
can begin building into the future:  the next stage, as I see it, will be a
dictionary with usage examples that could serve as the basis of a pedagogical
grammar.  As for those pronunciation issues, I perhaps have a somewhat
different perspective than others on the list.  From the beginning, Tony
(director of the language program) has been firmly committed to teaching an
Indian-pronounced form of Chinuk Wawa.  Now, the sound systems of the local
indigenous languages are complex, and include a number of sounds difficult
for English speakers to learn.  At the same time, those difficult sounds are
more-or-less the same in all of the local indigenous languages.  Once you
start catching on to those sounds, the picture becomes much clearer and
simpler--and (hopefully) so does our spelling system.  With respect to
pronunciation, Grand Ronde Chinuk Wawa is very similar to other
Indian-pronounced regional forms of CW.  Mud and confusion enter mainly
because people get stuck somewhere in between English and "Indian".

During odd moments Tony and I muse about bigger dictionaries covering bigger
chunks of the Northwest.  A logical place for us to start, it seems to me,
would be to expand the regional focus to the whole lower Columbia River.
 There is some very good material out there:  Harrington's meticulous
recordings from Bay Center and elsewhere; The Demers catechism and
dictionary, which "underdifferentiated" as it is points definitely to an
Indian-pronounced, lower Columbia variety.  (The syntax of the Demers
catechism, by the way, I find wonderfully clear and intelligible to my Grand
Ronde attuned ears; too bad about the content.)

Well, perhaps long enough in the wind for now, wikna?
--Henry

On Mon, 25 September 2000, Dave Robertson wrote:

>
> I'm getting pretty long-winded these days, huh?  Must be from taking up
> running.
>
> Hey, it seems to me that we're coming to realize an important issue in our
> ongoing discussions of the relative merits of the varieties of Chinuk Wawa.
>
> So far nobody has assembled Grand Ronde data together with the older, more
> widely known materials.  When you two are putting together the dictionary,
> Henry and Tony, I know that you are concerned with including an etymology
> for each word, to show which language it came from originally.  Maybe it's
> important (for purposes of teaching outside of Sawash Ili7i) to include the
> well-known older spellings of each word as well.
>
> You can thank me later for volunteering you for the extra work :-), or
> justifiably tell me to do it myself if I think it's such a good idea.  But I
> do see in this approach a potentially neat bridge between the the older and
> the newer information available on Chinook Jargon.  Qhata mEsayka tEmtEm?
>
> My question would be where to draw the limit, which older forms to include
> or exclude.  Eula Petite's system for writing her language deserves
> inclusion as much as Shaw's or Gibbs'.  (You guys are making use of some of
> her innovations, apparently, in the pronunciation shown for some of the
> words in the dictionary.)
>
> Dave


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