Enough Already

[Nadja Adolf]

I am writing this because apparently there is some confusion about what
the buckskinner thing is about, at least if this letter received from a
list member is typical of the impression given by earlier posts.

	Being new to the Jargon and have only one LuLu under my belt, I would
	like to ask you what this buckskinner Jargon is?

There isn't a "buckskinner jargon." A group of buckskinners have shown
interest in learning more Chinook Jargon.

	It sounds like your are "kicking to the curb" Grand Ronde Jargon for
	this buckskinner Jargon and making a quasi statements as to how the
	Grand  Ronde Jargon is second rate or somehow less important than the
	Grand  Ronde Jargon.

I have never said nor implied such a thing. I have suggested that the use
of the terms "high" and "low" for different dialects isn't useful or
indicated at this time. These are linguistic "technical terms" that don't
really fit the geographical regional distinctions seen in the jargon.
(see technical term definitions in Yule.)

I have said that GR Wawa has undergone more apparent Creolization, which
has enriched the expressivity of the language. What this means is that
it was more heavily used, and that users as a matter of course created
new ways of speaking. Creolization is not an insult - it is a process
that describes how a jargon becomes a primary language for a speaker
group.

	I do not quite understand why you referred to a "language
	war" in one of your emails, it almost appeared that you were
	trolling.

This was intended as a sardonic response to the efforts made to split
the list between different dialectical factions. It seems to me that
when a language has as few speakers as Chinook, it becomes more important
for all the dialect speakers to work together to preserve the language.

Besides, I live about a mile from the salt water and own a sailboat, not
a troller, and I don't have a commercial fishing license. B^)
	
	There is allot of energy being expended here, are there
	secondary motives in play?

Well, last time I checked, I wasn't Byzantine. B^)

I do have two requests: one, I would like advice on materials and ideas
to use with the buckskinners group; two, I don't want to see the
Chinook group fragment.

I'm a little concerned about your questions because it doesn't seem like
you've actually read the postings you're responding to.

And all this was in answer to:

Mike Cleven <ironmtn at BIGFOOT.COM>
	
	[Maybe some people say Grand Ronde Wawa can make better speech, this
	"high tongue" - a name I use for it - and the skookum wawa/trade
	language/skokum hiyo/the Jargon, that is in all the country outside of
	Grand Ronde and the Chinook (Lower Columbia) Country, that this is not
	as good for making wawa.  I think that it is a different wawa, but the
	two can be mutually understood.  And be different!  And this other wawa
	is a good wawa, not a worse one than a better.

Both are expressive - but the use of the term "high", if I understand
Yule, isn't really the right term for differentiating between the different
geogpraphic dialects.

Also, are there only two dialects? From what I've seen of the Kamloops and
other speakers, there may be far more than two dialects, so I'm not really
comfortable labelling anything other than the written orthographies at this
point. So, I've been using ahnkuttie to refer to what was documented by
Gibbs and others - and even these hint at different dialects because of the
appendices referring to words in use that are "not specifically jargon"
in some of the older sources. And there apparently were even differences
at GR, if I understand Henry's thesis and the discussion of the Creolization
of pronouns between the enetai and the agency populations.

And of late I've received email about an Alaskan form which seems to be
different yet again, although there is some vocabulary overlap.

In short, it's a very complex thing, and we can't go back in time and hear
the different people speak. All we have from the 19th C are written
records, many of which seem to correlate more with the Puget Sound
and Eastern Washington sounds I grew up hearing.

	[I don't like the name "ahnkuttie" for skookum wawa (the trade language,
	etc.); this nem is better for Chinuk-wawa as in Grand Ronde, the old
	country of the first wawa people.

Ahnkuttie refers to what is seen in the old orthographies; and not current
spoken languages in my use of the term. Since we have no sound recordings
of how the Wawa was spoken in any location at the time these old dictionaries
were compiled, we can't really know the actual pronounciations of the words.

	Jargon, and it's not fair or correct to pretend that either the
	historical or old-time Jargon has to be examined and used only in
	reference to how GR is spoken and used.

I agree.

	This is why I think there has to be a separate gathering, that does not
	necessarily focus on GR Wawa, but has to gather together and celebrate
	the Skookum Wawa/Trade Language/Skokum Hiyo.  Everyone from the
	Grassroots people in the Cariboo to those trappers and backcountry
	rendez-vous folks who wrote in, from the Warm Springs elders to those I
	know exist in BC;

Would it make sense to have one longer conference with two separate tracks?
I am personally very uncomfortable with splitting the conferences and
lists completely; we are such a small group that dividing the community
means 15 people at each, and five of them are overlap between the two.
	
	town/district.  I think - since the trapper/rendezvous people seem like
	friendly folks, that some of us Jargonauts make the effort to go and
	mamook the wawa with them, and maybe it'd be good if we got the Cariboo
	Grassroots folks to trip down to Oregon to put on their show there.

Sounds good.

	Given the silence on my other posts lately, I gather that instead of
	throwing me off the list as was previously attempted, I'm simply going
	to be ignored instead of answered by those who find my views and ideas
	distasteful to their own priorities concerning the wawa.

Mike, I don't think anyone finds your views distasteful; I find them
discomfitting because I worry about the effects of splitting such a small
community. But you seem to want to pack up and leave without seeing if the
lu?lu or luwullo could be restructured to better meet the needs of both
communities.

	I'm not trying to break the community; only open it up so it's not as
	controlled and centred on one version of the Jargon and its history.

Maybe we need to discuss how the lu?lu is structured before we discuss
something so drastic as splitting the community? Several emails I've
received have suggested we need to reorganize the sequence and activities -
and several people have asked for more, not less, language instruction.

What I'm noticing is that I and you are taking up a lot of space here,
and I'd like to see other people's opinions on the list, instead of
private email things. It is really hard for any of us to know
what people really think until they post.

nadja