[Fwd: Re: We're seeing a key problem: Lack of explicit connec=?ISO-8859-1?Q?tionbetween_=C2?==?ISO-8859-1?Q?=C2_=C2_=C2_=C2_=C2_=C2?="ahnkuttie" and Grand Ronde materials]

[psu18009 at PDX.EDU]

Hello all,

I'm having to fall back on my old PSU box for this, the uswestmail.net server
being down for the second day.

I certainly feel that anyone is entitled to their own opinion as to what
constitutes acceptable pronunciation in Chinuk Wawa.  However, whether or not
the history of CW is being stuck "somewhere in between English and Indian"
depends on which speakers you're talking about.  Speakers of English tend to
bend the Indian phonetics of the Indian part of the lexicon (which on the lower
Columbia = about 2/3rds of the lexicon) in the direction of English.  Speakers
of different Northwest languages are influenced by the sound systems of their
own languages, yes, but the differences there are minor COMPARED TO the gulf
separating English, on the one hand, from the lot of Northwest indigenous
languages, on the other.  The Chinuk Wawa we're teaching at Grand Ronde is the
Chinuk Wawa formerly used, on a daily basis, within the Indian community--not
the Chinuk Wawa that English speaking settlers and officials presumably used
with Indians there.  I wish I knew more about the latter Chinuk Wawa:  there are
no accurate records that I've been able to find.

The "difficult" sounds in Chinuk Wawa for English speakers are not difficult to
list (especially for Tony and I, who have been teaching them to English
speakers):  voiceless lateral fricatives (the barred-l and barred-lambda in the
Americanist alphabet still  widely used for writing the tribal languages),
uvular stops and fricatives (q, "x" with the dot underneath), glottalized stops
and affricates.  But these sounds are TYPICAL of Northwest indigenous languages.
One language may use barred-lambda where another uses barred-l, leading to
Chinuk Wawa variants like tLoS vs. LuS:  I certainly never meant to say there
were no tribal accents.  At Grand Ronde, we hear only LuS.  But in other cases,
e.g. bastEn vs. pastEn (the "p", note, being unaspirated), we hear both.  A
glance at the dictionary sample will show that while each entry has a single
lead form, many also have variants (that is, acceptable alternate
pronunciations).

Well, hope I'm being clear enough.  As for the northern CW samples on the
CD, listen for those lateral fricatives, uvular stops and fricatives, and
glottalized stops.  That's what I was talking about, not accent
differences and/or speaker idiosyncracies (which speakers of any language may
have) with respect to the exact quality of the vowel, or degree of voicing, or
aspiration, or (for that matter) forcefulness of glottalization.  Henry