More practice CJ texts?

[Mike Cleven]

Dave Robertson wrote:
>
> Thanks to a number of you who have contacted me asking for more of these practice texts.  I'll try to continue sharing these materials with you.
>
> ONE MORE QUESTION:  Would you like me to include "exercise" questions with each of these readings?  I could send along 5 or so questions in Jargon with each text, for you folks to respond to.

Dave, send me all the quizzes you've done; we might as well archive them
somewhere within my site as a full section of same (I know they're all
on CHINOOK's linguistlist.org archive, but the idea here is to isolate
them as a series of exercises grouped on a single page; if you want to
run a course (send $5, as the guys with the Klingon mail-order program
do) then people can subscribe to emailing you with their answers, and
you can charge ($20) for a certificate at the end of things.  Hey, I
know it's commercialism but even academics have to make a buck or two
where they can ;-).  We can put them at http://www.hiyu.net/course or
/exercises or whatever....
>
> BORING NOTES FOLLOW...
> Note that these texts are written in (transcribed) Duployan alphabet, so some of the words will be spelled in a very different way from what you may have seen in other CJ books.  My hope is that, by reading this stuff, you'll find it increasingly easy to read CJ written in all the various writing systems.  --Eventually, you might even tolerate the way we linguists write the language!

I think the best comparison to the issue that Dave's alluding to here is
with the way English was so variably spelled (spelt) in the 19th
Century; as with other languages, but English in this period most of
all, and even more in the centuries before; there was no such a things
as regularized spelling until fairly recently; so the same casualness
also applied to transcriptions of the Jargon.  Even Shaw and Gibbs give
many examples of the variable spelling that was commonplace, each an
effort to record the sound of the spoken Jargon word.  That these are
also prononciation changes (ukuk, okook, okoke; kloosh, closhe) as much
as simple variations of spelling is simply a reminder that each speaker
of the Jargon spoke it liberally, and with license; that's the way it
was.  As was English in older times, again....

>
> There will also be some words that are unique to _Kamloops Wawa_, so be advised that if you try saying "styuil" or "haha" when talking Jargon, the only people that'll understand you are other readers of _K.W._  That's no big problem, really, since there are so many slightly different varieties of CJ already:  You need to be flexible in listening to, and talking to, people in Jargon.
>
> I'll keep my eyes out for non-_Kamloops Wawa_ materials that can be used for practice texts as well.
>
> It would be very rewarding to be able to help people learn CJ through the Internet, since our CHINOOK group has turned out to be one of the most accessible sources of information on the Jargon.

That was my intent with my site when I was first building it; a language
lesson, hence the name Chinook Jargon Phrasebrook.  Marv and I at one
time had discussed including sound in the instructional part of the
website, akin to his Cherokee Companion but using online services and
programs rather than a standalone product like the Companion.  We'd also
had grand plans to make a self-pronouncing chart of the Duployan system,
again with online sound.  Lots of work.  Unfortunately I know little
about curriculum structure and teaching method, etc. to say nothing of
building interactive sites properly; I'd meant there to be more phrase
examples and responsive tests where you could submit translations of
given phrases or situations; so given help from a good CGI/HTML
programmer and a teacher to structure the curriculum into proper form
for easy learning, and go from there.  When I get the time, of course,
which I never do; but if someone with those; as it is I've just put out
feelers to start working up my Lillooet-Bridge River Country site; again
when I get the time.  But the raw material's all out there for someone
who wants to take what I've posted and reprocess it.

For newcomers and lurkers, my site is at http://www.hiyu.net or at
http://www.cayoosh.net/hiyu (they'll be the same when I contract
webspace finally; going via www.hiyu.net still carries a Register.com
banner); www.cayoosh.net is the address for the rebuild of my Lillooet
site.
>
> Alta tlus naika makmak ikta.

Chako skookum, mukmuk hiyu

Konaway Kloosh....

MC