Access to Chinook Jargon materials (was...Re: Thanks Linda!)

[David D. Robertson]

Nadja and Jeff,

Thanks for reigniting a fire that can either warm or burn (the varieties of
Chinook Jargon I'm familiar with make no distinction) but which needed
tending.

Yesterday I wrote up a long reply to Jeff's message, then my server went
kokshut.  Alta weght nika mamook tzum.

Both of you have written excellent observations & raised questions that
need lots of thought from all of us involved with CJ.  It's interesting
that much of our disagreement boils down to views of the Grand Ronde
tribes' role as the most active & dedicated disseminator of Jargon
knowledge.  In consequence of this, I find my remarks below will sound like
defenses of Grand Ronde, a sort of puzzling development; it's not incumbent
on GR to defend itself, any more than I'm the person to defend GR.

Many of your ideas about access to information on Jargon are ones I
wholeheartedly agree with.  But to the extent that an accusatory tone rings
in both of your postings on this topic, I find myself strongly disagreeing
with you.

***Is anyone trying to turn Jargon into a secret language?  Not to my
knowledge!  ;-)

***Is anyone trying to keep Jargon from the public?  Only, I think, insofar
as it's considered a tribal heritage language & common property of Grand
Ronde members--thus any elders' words of Jargon need to be treated with
appropriate care.

***Is anyone trying to call inferior or wrong any Chinook Jargon that
diverges from the so-called "best" Jargon of Chinookans at Grand Ronde?  On
the contrary, for its own purposes (which are clearly identified as such),
GR seems to want primarily to teach Jargon, and since you've got to have
some structure in language classes, or else face disastrously uneven
results, GR's chosen this variety as a standard metric.  If we turn to
Grand Ronde for instruction in CJ, we predictably need to be prepared to
follow GR's standards.  Otherwise we'll wind up as semi-speakers, not the
fluent perpetuators that this language needs.

On the other hand, as at least one CHINOOK list member has written
privately to me, it's effortless to understand the frustration of those who
want to be speakers of Chinook Jargon & have put a good amount of effort
into becoming such.  Pedagogical resources are highly limited.
Standardization of pronunciation, of word choice, and to some extent of
grammar is nonexistent.  The materials I consider most useful for the
learner, i.e. texts in Jargon, are a finite body of material, and are
usually available only if you can xerox them at a good library or archive,
or are willing to spend significant money at an Internet used-book
company.  (I'm thinking of Jacobs' CJ Texts & Le Jeune's _Kamloops Wawa_
newspapers.)  Infinite distracting, petty confusions are rampant among
learners of Jargon, for all these reasons, and predictably emerge by the
dozens per every attempted posting in CJ online.

(This applies, I think, to any Jargon group that's existed -- CHINOOK,
Chinuk Illahee, Chinookgroups at yahoo.com, Skookum-L.  I predict the
formation of new online groups may not resolve the issue, but only
intensify it.)

What's needed is patience & dedication -- as well as grant money.  I will
gladly write the benchmark grammar, dictionary, & complete annotated
edition of the 1,000 pages of _Kamloops Wawa_ if someone, perhaps the
Foundation for Endangered Languages, will kindly underwrite me!  :-)  And I
guarantee that the existence of such a reference standard will be of solid
practical use in creating fluent speakers & readers.

A last note:  I love to see Jeff's & Nadja's passion in their postings
about Chinook Jargon, a passion I share and which, again, an off-list
message to me has discussed.  Let's bear in mind that everyone who's trying
to learn, teach, & preserve this language has such a passion of their own,
and not fault them for it.  In each case, I see good intentions.  To
quibble over individuals' wishes to use CJ would be to miss the forest for
the trees.

Practical suggestions for improving our situation, beyond eventually
getting reference & instructional materials into print, can include "live"
online teaching sessions using a specially created chat room.  (If we can
persuade teachers of Jargon to give this a try.)  Since our CJ community is
so scattered, conferencing ideas like this may be a big step forward.  We
also need to continue, expand, and improve the annual Chinuk Lu7lu,
probably by creating a permanent, year-round committee to replace our usual
last-minute, ad-hoc setup!

That's how I think.  --Dave




On Fri, 22 Nov 2002 06:51:27 -0800, Nadja Adolf <yakimabelle at YAHOO.COM>
wrote:

>Mahsie for your clarification on the use of the word
>"sikhs" and it's particular use by the Hudson sisters.
>Your explanation clarified very much Dave's answer and
> indicated the likely reason for the gender bias.
>
>On the idea that the the Wawa is being modified by end
>users, isn't there an authority similar to the French
>Academy for the Wawa?
>
>In any event, writing in the Wawa is out for me in the
>future until some accurate resources are available,
>instead of the old, obsolete, "pidgin" type texts as
>even simple words can be misleading. A clear example
>of this is that the term I had always heard and used
>for rabbit was "kwitshadie"; but until the last Lu?lu
>there was no information available to me that the term
>was incorrect - until someone kindly corrected me at
>the last Lu?lu. But the conferences are just too short
>to convey much of this information - in the previous
>two conferences I had attended this had never come up
>- and so incorrect usage was perpetuated. Given this,
>I have abandoned writing in the Wawa for the
>forseeable future, until such time as a contemporary
>resource is available.
>
>
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