CJ sound system(s)?

[Mike Cleven]

Sally Thomason wrote:
>
> I sent my comments on CJ phonology before reading Mike
> Cleven's response to Dave's message, and I guess I should
> clarify my point.  It's easy to show that there was (and
> perhaps still is) a consistent CJ phonology

OK, OK, I need some clarification here, or rather I guess the
clarification is finally emerging because of the distinction in meaning
between _phonology_ and _prononciation_.  This appears to be what's up
with what Dave has been trying to say, but which seemed to mean that
there was a consistent and recognizable pronounciation system across the
region and from people to people (within Natives, that is); which if I
took it (too) wrong I'm sorry; but I don't think I did; the _impression_
given by the presentation last summer concerning "standard"
pronounciations of non-GR CJ was that there was supposed to be (or
should be?; this was also not clear) a homogenous system of
_pronounciation_, which to my ear (if not study) there just isn't.  It
sounds like the academics around here are of a mind that there is
"consistent phonology" of Native speakers throughout the region
....really? - between a Kwakwala speaker and a Tsilhqo'tin one?  The
only reason I can see this being the case is that Native-Native
transmission of the CJ since the 1890s was focussed as the secret lingua
franca of the boarding schools; and of course kids would wind up with an
intermediary "shared" phonology between different languages and language
groups.  It would help, of course, if there were more contemporary
documentation of CJ usage by 19th Century Natives in regions not
well-covered by the existing body of Jargon lore/resources; e.g. Nuxalk,
Heiltsuk, Oweekeeno, Haida etc.  Not that many local people with quill
in hand at the time (Klahanie, klahanie, cultus tlale tzum! - out, out,
damned inkspot) would themselves share a consistent orthographical
standard like the IPA, or even one way of using the Roman alphabet.  The
recordings that exist (from anywhere in BC) are of course more likely to
date from after the foundation of the residential school system (1890s,
peaking in the early 20th Century), and seem extremely unlikely to
reflect how Jargon was spoken in, say, the 1870s _anywhere_, since the
intertribal mixing and "flourishing" of the Jargon in the schools (under
repression, but also because repression is what had brought these
different language communities so closely together - in a purely
childhood-adolescent demographic) from the turn of the century onwards
just hadn't occurred yet.  Doesn't it also seem likely that an "evolved"
phonology will result from people for whom the Jargon functioned as a
mother tongue (or parallel mother tongue), as opposed to those who
learned it as a second language to the traditional tongue(s)?

To do my part, I'll make a point of looking up and asking Mr. Jacobs,
the Metis elder who teaches Jargon at Toti:lthet in Mission BC and
seeing how he's pronouncing things, and will undertake to record him if
he'd so oblige on behalf of scholarship and posterity.  He's from
Lakalhamen (Nicomen Island, which supposedly is the birthplace of
Halqemeylem, according to the Traveller's Guide to Aboriginal BC) and I
don't know exactly what he means by "Metis" (unlikely "traditional"
Riel-Dupont Metis but possibly) and whether or not he's a Halqemeylem
speaker/inheritor as well; and what the provenance of his _own_ Jargon
is.

I meant in my recent tirade concerning the example I was quoting from
the Fraser Canyon (Siska is just south of Lytton/Camchin/hist. "The
Forks"), i.e. "skokum hiyo" was that this (30ish) Nlaka'pamux Native
(capital alliteration unintentional) who cited his late uncle's name for
the Jargon was distinctly using to me what is a "hard" k, however that's
written in IPA, rather than the "soft" unaspirated k (which sounds like
a rather soft g to my uneducated ear) that I took a while getting use to
after hearing Tony speak in words such as "skookum" and "naika"; I'll
grant that I've adopted in my own personal mishmash Jargon the GR/Tony
way of saying "naika", "maika" etc. but I'm pretty damned sure that
these were naiKa and naiKa here rather than naiga and maiga.  I'd be
curious to know how the Union of BC Indian Chiefs meant their document
title "Nesika" to be pronounced, for instance.  Re "skookum" pronounced
one way or the other, the difference in how the k's are made seems to
affect the rhythm of the word, as well as the vowels a bit, the one more
emphatic, the other more euphonious (Tony's).  Which brings up the
general issue of vowel variation, as represented here in both words; are
the vowels _also_ consistent in the Native-pronounced (or phonologied?)
system; "hiyu" and "hiyo"?  I guess you guys must really only be talking
about consonants, or are you?

Also, if there is a "consistent native phonology", then why is there a
distinct "h" in Fraser Canyon Jargon when the KW's is "aioo" with no
initial aspiration - unless I'm right about LeJeune's French
interpretation of how to make an "h" French-style (glottal-stop it);
because the Fraser Canyon towns are most definitely within the purview
of the Kamloops diocese and its publications, missals et al; many
Lillooets and Lyttons (St'at'imc and Nlaka'pamux) _did_ go to "coastal"
schools (Mission's not exactly coastal, but it _is_ in the rain country
below the mountains) so maybe there's an alternate influence there.  Do
we _know_ that Kamloops and Nicola-area speakers (definitely in the
demesne of KW-ism) pronounce their hiyu's as aioo's, or vice-versa?  Is
this covered in Dvjezdana's work?


I'll have a listen again to the CD recordings from Georgia Strait, but
they don't sound anything like Tony's CW at all to me; when I first met
Tony and heard him wawa to me I was taken aback, as his speech
rhythm/manner was very smooth/mellifluous in contrast to the
"punchiness" I _thought_ I hear in stowbelow (northern) Jargon; not just
the phonologies but the whole delivery......I still think there's a
difference; and will study the other mails to figure out how much of "up
this way" exists in the documentary/documentation that _does_ exist.

Also, might I propose terminologically speaking that we consider GR
Chinuk-Wawa=>CW so that non-GR, pan-regional Chinook Jargon => CJ? -
something like the native/Native observation noted by Dave, which
unfortunately remains awkward in Canada where the construction "First
Nations person" (caps, caps, no caps) is the formal standard, at least
for now.  What I mean by the CW/CJ dichotomy is the difference between
the formalized pronounciation standards of GRCW vs. the flexible (if
"phonologically consistent among Native speakers)

 across Native
> speakers of the pidgin, from the 19th century through the
> mid-20th century.  The evidence, as I said in my earlier
> message, is in the consistent pronunciations recorded from
> speakers of a variety of Native languages by different
> linguists over a period of about 70 years, and there's also
> indirect evidence in many wordlists published by non-Native
> laymen.  The evidence is especially striking precisely when
> a particular speaker speaks CJ with sounds that don't occur
> in his native language.  Of course this doesn't mean that
> the pidgin was, or is, without variation; all languages have
> lots of variation, including dialect differences in different
> regions.  As for differences between Natives and Whites, most
> Whites (again, through the mid-20th century) don't seem to have
> learned the non-European sounds of CJ; that's why it's so clear
> that CJ must have been transmitted from Native to Native, not
> from Native to White to Native.
>
> The word "skookum" doesn't, as far as I know, show up with
> a "hard" (glottalized) k in any of the older materials, or
> have one etymologically.  If it has one nowadays, it might
> be the "hyperforeignization" phenomenon that other people
> have found in other languages, where speakers extend "exotic"
> pronunciations beyond their etymologically expected domains
> into new words -- deliberate extension, that is.
>
>   -- Sally