Sounds

[Dave Robertson]

LhaXayEm,

Wel, wek dret khakwa nayka na tEmtEm, Nadja.
I beg to differ.

Some of the sounds of Grand Ronde Chinuk-wawa would be hard to imitate exactly, based only on written explanations of them.  But I think a person would have a good idea of what they must sound like, and would recognize them when they're spoken, given only that amount of exposure.

And if you've heard Sechelt, or Georgian, or Amharic (et al.) spoken, you've heard nearly all the sounds in GR Chinuk already.

I'm very interested in the recordings I've heard of BC Jargon.  They're all or nearly all spoken by Indians, and have a sound pattern recognizably closer to what's represented in the "ahnkuttie"/"White"/whatchamacallit CJ books.  This is still only in the educated-guess stage for me, but I suspect this represents a pretty well-crystallized North Coast CJ.  By that impromptu label I mean the coastal areas of Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the Georgia Strait, northern Vancouver Island, the Fraser River, and some others.

In many ways this variety of CJ looks systematically different from (let's call it) Columbia CJ.  The latter would include perhaps areas from Grays Harbor through Chehalis and Cowlitz territories, thence upriver to Wishram and Wasco lands, and downstream to the mouth of the Columbia and southerly to say Tillamook areas.

This is just an informal characterization of the well-documented CJ-speaking areas; a third distinct variety would seem to have centered on Kamloops, British Columbia, if only because Father Le Jeune did his work there.  His Chinuk was perhaps idiosyncratic, perhaps more-or-less representative of how indigenous people used it in interior BC (I suspect the latter, for various reasons).

Lots of fascinating exploration of CJ remains to be done.  It's good to see the renaissance of serious interest in the language in the last very few years.

Alta na lhatwa,
Dave



Nadja Adolf <nadja at NODE.COM> wrote:
>
> LaXayEm,
>
> Spose ma wik Latuwa Lu?lu pi ma wik lalang man ma tu?wEn hilu tEmtEm
> munk-laLah.
>
> Na Latuwa,
>
> nadja
>
>
> Howdy,
>
> If you didn't go to the conference and you aren't a linguists, you have
> no idea of how to make the sounds.
>
> I go,
>
> nadja
>

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