Dialects and a note

[Nadja Adolf]

There may have been some confusion in previous postings as to which
words were mine, and which words were those I was responding to.

My mailer indents the received messages, and puts my paragraphs at the
outside edges; it does not add "hooks" (>) to lines.

So, in this letter, Mike's words are the indented paragraphs, and mine
are the paragraphs that begin at the leftmost margin.
	
	From: Mike Cleven <ironmtn at BIGFOOT.COM>
	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").

Ummm.... I have used ahnkuttie not for spoken, but for orthography - because
we really don't have any spoken samples from the 19th C. When I listen to the
CD disc of different speakers, although there is some variation in
pronunciation and vocabulary, it doesn't seem any more diverse than say
Brooklyn, NY, and Portland, OR.

At one point, until I did some further reading, I thought that there was a
greater difference than actually exists. The most obvious difference - the
shortened clitic pronouns - wasn't universal at GR, either, according to
Henry's dissertation.

There is probably about as much difference between other jargon dialects
as there is between say Puget Sound and GR. What we have here are gradations
in how things are/were spoken - and it's still one language.

My real concern is that with as few speakers as there are, that we really
need to pull together to save this lalang, instead of schisming by regional
differences.

Now, on a more cheerful note, Piegeena has gotten back in touch with me, and
it looks like there may be a Chinook Wawa class down here with the
buckskinners in early November or thereabouts, when they have a rendezvous
or shortly after the rendezvous.

This isn't a conference, but a short class, and it looks like several of the
buckskinners may be interested in attending the lu?lu next year. Piegeena
shared a few of the things he knew, from jargon gotten from his father - the
"le" and "la" in French words is omitted in certain cases, there are some
different words, and how the buckskinners at one time published a paper
in Wawa; but are more interested in oral than written communication.
There are also some Spanish words in the jargon he knows.

Piegeena's father's jargon apparently comes from far northern California, if
I understood him right; which might not be the case since I was under
anesthesia earlier today for yet another tedious medical procedure.

nadja