CJ in Flathead (Interior Salish)

[David D. Robertson]

aa, Phil,

I agree, and I feel that a number of other words in Flathead (Montana
Salish) and its sister dialects Spokane and Kalispel derive from Chinuk-
Wawa.

/c'ul/ for "salt, salty" is a chance resemblance with Jargon, though.  This
is a widely attested native Salishan root.

There are additional words in this Fl-Sp-Ka language which offer us
tantalizing glimpses into the history of Indian contact with outsiders in
this region.  Consider:

/lolwa/, with stress on final syllable, for "bead, beads".  I've long
puzzled over this item, and my gut tells me it's a loanword:  Either from
some French variety or it's a Salishan reinterpretation of Jargon
~ /lu7lu/ "round, circle" as a C1- reduplication, if I'm on the right track.

/pa:taq/, also with final stress, for "potato".  Almost certainly from a
French variety that had [patak] instead of the current standard Fr
<patate>.  May have been reinterpreted as having a final /q/, as SE
Interior Salish mutated /k/ into a previously absent voiceless hushing
affricate /ch/.  I feel that the long vowel of the initial syllable may
also reflect faithfulness to a foreign-sounding original.

/lqelet/, finally stressed, for "bread sp.".  Must be from Fr (variety),
cf. <la galette> "broad thin bread; sea biscuit" [pilot bread?].  These
Salish dialects have no /g/, may have interpreted Fr /g/ as /k/, thence
as /q/ just as with /pa:taq/.  Contrast both these with an evidently more
recent loan, /kanti/ "candy" from local English (not */qanti/!), perhaps
borrowed at a time when the /k/ => /ch/ sound shift was no longer
productive.  One may compare also with the non-affricated initial
in /canmn/ "Chinese", from local English <Chinaman/-men>, which too may be
suggestive of a desire to establish minimal confusion with, yet maximal
identity with, the treacherously shifting terrain of /k/ ~ /ch/.  In much
of American English in 2002, a comparable vortex of phonological confusion
is the spread of nasalization onto vowels, or the confounding of /d/
with /t/ when between a stressed vowel1 and an (unstressed) vowel2; both
can appear simultaneously in casual speech, where I often hear e.g.
[orgaenDIk] and [vEl^mpshUwUs] for <organic> and <voluptuous>.

/leputen/ with final stress, for "bottle".  Would seem to reflect a French
variety (not Chinook Jargon?) having a final [l] rather than current
standard French <la bouteille>, pan-CJ ~ /lEbEtay/.

There may be in these words and others of Fl-Ka-Sp many clues to the
variety or varieties of French spoken in NW Montana, N Idaho, and NE
Washington in former times.  A definite study has yet to be done.

-- Dave