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[Mike Cleven]

Kara Briggs wrote:
>
> Dear All,
> I think Tony makes some very important points. I am relatively new to this
> listserv though I've been reading for several months. Native Americans,
> namely in this case the Grand Ronde, need to be the acknowledged experts in
> their own languages, even if the languages are dangerously close to being
> lost.

[rest snipped]

Tony?  Unless you've had some private email from him, there's been no
post-reply from Tony on this yet.

Throughout my discussion/experience of the problem as described, I have
never meant that Grand Ronde native people should not fully
restore/enhance Grand Ronde Wawa; but as such it _must_ be considered as
distinct from, if interintelligible with, the "Wide Jargon" or whatever
the collective of non-GR Jargons might come to be called (I've been
using skookum wawa, Nadja has used ahnkuttie, Terry likes lelang, and
the elders from Warm Springs called it simply "the trade language").
There is no dispute about the phonological and lexical validity of Grand
Ronde Wawa _in_ Grand Ronde; but clear efforts should be made to not
neglect the validity and importance of other ways of making the Wawa.
In reference to this "other Wawa", I have to repeat again that it was
not (and certainly is not) exclusively a native language, and that it
belonged to ALL the people of the region, no matter where they were from
(immigrants from China being able to talk to immigrants from Scandinavia
in it, to cite the famous example).....

MC