Mukka mukka wa wa?

[Mike Cleven]

Got the following story from a guy who maintains a website on Sir John
Franklin, who I was researching for a writing project; sending it to the
list for further input on what the exchange might have meant:

> A quick p.s.:
>
> Also, I was very interested to see that you maintain an online
> Chinook jargon site!  My dad grew up in Mount Vernon, Washington; his
> dad -- my granpaw -- was born in BC while the family was on its way
> from a failed homestead in Ontario to look for work in Washington
> territory; they ended up working for a sawmill in Sedro Wooley.
> Anyway, my granpaw was quite an old hand at Chinook jargon, which he
> learned as a boy back in the 1890's.  I only wish I had thought to
> talk to him more about it when he was alive.  The one thing he had,
> which he seemed to regard as a sort of joke between him and my
> father, was a bit of dialogue that went like this:
>
> 1st speaker: Heylo kumtucks
> 2nd speaker: Mukka Mukka Wa wa
>
> I've tried several Chinook phrasebooks, but haven't been able to come
> up with a very sensible reading of this interchange -- if you could
> help me parse it out, I'd sure be grateful.

I'll be forwarding this to our listserve, but  I can make a stab at it;
it strikes me that this was probably an exchange that they must have
heard that has an "in-joke" built into it; how the cadence of speech was
delivered would make a difference in the possibilites.

Heylo kumtucks is simple enough - "don't understand" (halo kumtux in my
site's spelling).

Mukka Mukka Wa wa - lit. "eat/food talk/word".  I think this is probably
"eat first, talk later"; if they spoke it with a break in between the
"mukka mukka" and the "wa wa" instead of as a straight string/phrase
this seems plausible.  Conceivably if improbably it could be "eat [your]
words".  But like I said, it seems like an in-joke to me....

MC