Fwd: Re: "Ankuttie" Chinook, a language standardized for an odd purpose: Writing one word at a time...was Re: [Fwd: Re: "Tanasvale" in Portland, Oregon]

[zenk at USWESTMAIL.NET]

Dave,

Just discovered what I've been doing wrong:  I've been sending my messages to the list to you, neglecting to click "reply all."  Anyway, here's another one that didn't make it to the list sometime back.  Henry


------- Start of forwarded message -------

Subject: Re: "Ankuttie" Chinook,
	a language standardized for
	an odd purpose:
	Writing one word at
	a time...was Re: [Fwd:
	Re: "Tanasvale" in Portland, Oregon]
To: TuktiWawa at NETSCAPE.NET
From: zenk at uswestmail.net
Date: 11 Oct 2000 21:13:57 PDT

Dave and all,

Seeing all those "Skookums" in Jeff's list reminded me that "skookum" was (is?) a real word in the local English of NW loggers.  It means "good," more or less:  not quite what it means in its source language, Chinuk Wawa.  I should ask some of my uncles who were loggers for more detail.  Is that a woods word up around Bay Center, Tony?

The name "Skookumchuck", while Jargon (a swift river or rapids), is also a name of a river (the one that flows through Centralia, WA, the bridge over it being the site of the infamous "Centralia massacre" during the great Red Scare of the 20s).

"Tanasbrook" I suspect is influenced by "Tanasbourne":  the development was already there, and somebody thought to name something (something near water?) in a manner reminiscent of the rest.  The water may even have been part of the landscaping.  It's quite a monster development.  Anyway, I don't believe "Tanasbrook" is an old pioneer-era name, in which case of course one probably could surmise a Jargon influence.

--Henry

On Tue, 10 October 2000, Dave Robertson wrote:

>
> Hayash mersi, Jeff,
>
> As usual your energy makes for creative results.
>
> AnyWho sounds like a neat research tool, and of course we should keep in mind the variant spellings that are used in the Old Style for many Chinook Jargon words.
>
> But it's remarkable how many CJ words there are which have gained virtually standardized spellings in the English alphabet:  "skookum", "kloshe", "illahee", "wawa", "chuck", "hiyu" or "hi-yu".
>
> Can any of you think of others?
>
> These were words which were widely known and apparently relatively frequently used by speakers of English, and maybe for that reason they were or will be the last fragments of Chinook Jargon to be forgotten by Bostons.  (There's another one--"Boston"!)  Fodder for a brief paper in the subfield of linguistics now known as Language Death (for real).
>
> It strikes my funnybone that one could fairly say CJ had, by its time of maximum expansion, become quite standardized in written form.  However, these standardized spellings applied mostly, I think, to "bons mots" of Jargon; meaning, to isolated words dropped into Northwest English discourse.  Compare this with the widely accepted use of "soundbites" of Latin, French, or Greek in literary English.
>
> When people wanted to demonstrate that they had an active grasp of spoken Chinook Jargon, it seems to me, they wrote it the way they perceived the sounds, rather than following the spellings of Gibbs' vocabulary or the like.  (I'm thinking of quotations like "Cla-how-you six!")
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Dave


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