Anyone out here?

[terry glavin]

hang in there, nadja.

i'm sorry i missed the LuLu. i find this a really interesting debate. i
don't mind thinking of Grande Ronde as a sort of "high wawa." "aunkuttie"
sounds fine for "low speakers," too. my only thoughts are that lelang as it
was used throughout the northwest served purposes that would be defeated, it
seems to me, by conformity to orthographic conventions or "proper"
pronunciations. it was fluid, like all language.

 i have found myself referring to it as lelang. this is because i am no
doubt influenced by lejeune's work, and i'm particularly smitten by the way
wawa and aboriginal languages have always done interesting things with
french words (in chilcotin country, for instance, "pillip pateece," whose
grandson ended up known as philip baptstick, derived his name from philipe
baptiste; the charleyboy family began as charlesbois, etc.), and also
informed (being kinchotch) that my own country sprang from what john ralston
saul calls the "triangular foundation" of aboriginal, french and english
societies; the french plinth in that foundation is very important to me (as
an old fashioned canadian), and the french influence in lelang persisted
more vigorously up here than below the 49th, anyway (was that a long and
complicated sentence or what).

so i like lelang. and if anyone wants to say wa-pay-to instead of waPAHto,
that's fine by me too (see separate post).

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Cleven <ironmtn at BIGFOOT.COM>
To: CHINOOK at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG <CHINOOK at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
Date: 20 September 2000 17:24
Subject: Re: Anyone out here?


>Nadja Adolf wrote:
>>
>> Is anyone out here? Or has everyone been scared away by what is
>> starting to look like a "language war?"
>>
>> Mike, I chose the term "ahnkuttie" because the use of "high" and "low"
>> often implies a "preferred, more socially valid" formal form of the
>> language versus a lower, everyday conversational form of the language.
>> In some cases, the "high" and "low" forms are even separate languages,
>> as in France where French was the low form and Latin the high form during
>> the Dark Ages. And "ahnkuttie" is a word in the jargon. In the future
>> I will refer to generic vs. Grand Ronde if that is more comfortable for
>> people.
>
>Which is why I chose "skookum" vs "hyas"; avoiding "keewulee" altogether
>(BTW keekwulee in my part of the country is pronunced quiggly....)
>
>
>> Right now, it iooks like Jim and I are going to try and work with some
>> buckskinners, once the fire season is over and the contact
>> person gets back to us. Our contact person speaks jargon, "generic", not
>> "GR", and has some fellow buckskinners who are interested
>> in learning. From what I have been able to determine, they are interested
>> in a class, maybe lessons, and if we can put something together we may
>> be able to broaden the language base to include people who are likely to
>> practice it at home with family and use it to develop fluency.
>
>Yaka kloshe.
>
>Mike