chinook wawa

[Mike Cleven]

I'll reply to Linda's post, more or less, although I'd meant to respond
to Tony's and others due to the brou-haha I've raised this week; I'll be
away from easy access to my mail for the next week so I thought I'd
better make a few points before I go, as when I come back there'll be a
whole lot more water under the bridge.

First I'd like to make it clear that I have no hostility or axe to grind
with GR Wawa, or with GR.  As Linda notes below, non-GR and GR are
clearly interintelligible, as Tony and I agreed (in Chinook) at the pool
hall the Saturday night of the Lu'lu.  What I was objecting to, in part
of behalf of some who had remained publicly silent on matters that were
bothering them, was the insistence on the GR way of doing things vis a
vis the rest of the Jargon.  I know this was not intentional on Tony's
part, but was simply the effective upshot of a curriculum focussed on a
particular style of phonology.  This phonology is and should not be
taken as a "standard", and the essence of the Jargon is such that the
phonology should be irrelevant; witness Linda's citation of Cory's
conversation with Ila.

In using "variety" or "dialect" or whatever I'd said as a term, I've
reconsidered this to mean "style"; GR has parameters where good
prononciation and particular ideoms (idioms?) are hallmarks of that
community's use and history of the Jargon.  The other regional and
personal variations might better be discussed as styles, whether by
prononciation, syntax or whatever; but they should not be given short
shrift on the basis that "we don't know how it was pronounced" or "GR is
more/most important".

I also think that the idea of further gatherings _in_addition_ to the GR
Lu'lu (which seems pretty well entrenched now, although the original
idea was to move it around from year to year) are no threat to the GR
gathering or GR programs.  How could they be?  Would having a wawa
tenas-potlatch in Sechelt or Nisqually somehow "divide" or "weaken" the
Jargon?  Wouldn't the fact that it's being met on and discussed in other
regions than GR be a GOOD thing rather than a BAD one.  More is better,
not worse.

I've got to keep this short ("yay!" from the back row) so I can catch my
plane.  Just to have y'all understand I'm NOT trying to promote acrimony
and division; I just think you linguistics types should loosen up yer
knickers a bit about everything from prononciation to "what's more
native than not" (vis a vis the Jargon) and start considering the
possibilities of what could be, not what you'll simply recognize.  And
to remember that there is apparently still a strong regional presence to
the Jargon, if only by sentiment although apparently also by way of
surviving speakers; and seek it out, isntead of trying to squelch it.
You may not think that's what was transpiring, but spose klatawa kopa
haht-haht......

I gotta run..


Linda Fink wrote:
>
> I am confused about all the talk about different varieties of Chinook
> Jargon. I have quite a few jargon dictionaries (Gibbs, Gill, Thomas,) as
> well as the dictionary produced by Eula Petite, Grand Ronde tribal elder who
> taught the language here in Grand Ronde in the early 80s. They all look like
> the same language to me, albeit with different spellings and some different
> words and, of course, some different pronunciations.


>
> Cory Cook has learned jargon from nothing but (white man's) dictionaries and
> so, naturally, does not pronounce all the words as they are pronounced in
> Grand Ronde (or perhaps anywhere). Yet at the conference this summer he
> spoke jargon with Ila Dowd, tribal elder and one of the last surviving
> speakers of CJ, and she understood him perfectly. He did not tell me this --
> I was sitting next to her at the time.
>
> It seems to me that what Tony and Henry have done is standardize the
> spellings. They have of necessity made new symbols for the sounds that have
> no English equivalents. But the language is chinook wawa, whether it's
> spoken in Kamloops, Warm Springs, Grand Ronde or wherever. Just as English
> is English whether it's British English, Australian English, Southern U.S.
> English or Brooklynese. It may take a bit of concentration for one group to
> understand the other, but we can do it. I, for one, would prefer to learn
> British English as a "standard" and then pick up Brooklynese if I needed it
> rather than the other way around.

The point I'm trying to make is that conversational ability should take
precedence before difficult phonologies and what (to me) is an
obscurantist orthography.  As you note, Cory could converse with Ila
without having to plode his t's and unaspirate his k's.....

>
> Tony and Henry teach, it seems from what y'all are saying, a British English
> type CJ. I think we're darn lucky to have them doing it!

Fine; I just have reservations about the way it was being taught and
presented, and about some of the cultural biases inherent in the
rationalizations for that methodology.

Gotta go

Mike