[Fwd: CJ variation]

[Mike Cleven]

Dave Robertson wrote:
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: CJ variation
> Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2001 13:32:41 -0400
> From: Dell Hymes <dhh4d at cstone.net>
>
> I'm sympathetic to the points made by Dave Robertson in his message of Saturday
> 17 Mar 2001/
>
> For what it's worth, at Warm Springs in the 1960s a couple of people there
> said that they spoke CJ better at Grand Ronde.
> I didn't have the opportunity to find out what 'better' meant--
>     possible did more with it, possibly had a wider range of words, etc.
>
> But isn't it obvious that CJ (or CW) can use all the support it can get?
> That efforts to sustain it ought to be inclusive?

That's the basic gist of all my comments/complaints about this issue;
what really set me off was last summer's presentation by Jim and Henry
about a prescribed way for Bostons to "correctly" render Jargon a la
Indian; i.e. to "sound better".  In respect to Dave's comments about Z.
Vrzic's comments, I note that the example he gave (the continuative use
of "hiyu", for example) was not about the supposedly "consistent
phonology" of Native speakers, but rather about syntax and ideom
(idiom?); while there may have been a relatively consistent
syntactical/idiomatic usage across the region, at least in modes of
development/formation if not lexical consistency - probably shared by
non-Native speakers, I might add - there remains zilch in the way of
"proof" that people speaking Kamloops Wawa sounded very much at all like
people speaking Grand Ronde/Lower Columbia Wawa, or Warm Springs Wawa,
or Lower Mainland-Georgia Straits Wawa, sounded anything like each
other, except to say that they probably spoke it influenced by the
phonologies of their native languages; be that Nlaka'pamux or Swedish or
Chinese......all this looking for "real Jargon" in the way Natives used
it, supposedly in a "better" fashion than non-Natives, seems pure
poppycock, and again has more than a taint of ethnic exclusivism to
it.....

MC