Access to Chinook Jargon materials

[Nadja Adolf]

Thank you for being open to listening.

Let me clarify my position a bit.

> From:    "David D. Robertson" <ddr11 at COLUMBIA.EDU>
> Subject: Access to Chinook Jargon materials
> (was...Re: Thanks Linda!)
>
> Nadja and Jeff,
>
>
> 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.

My issue is less with the GR tribe - who in the past
seemed to have been quite willing to devote the Lu?lu
time to teaching all comers.

My issue is with the fact that the Lu?lu seems to have
turned into YAAC - "Yet Another Academic Conference."
And nothing else has arisen to take its place for
those who are not academics.

Digging into the notes of the first Lu?lu I attended
it seems that most of the time was dedicated to
actually conveying knowledge of the language - and, in
review I found that the the word "kwitshadie" was
actually *used* in a story written in a class exercise
and no objection was recorded.

Two years ago I attended the conference, and watched
my once interested husband become disgusted. First, an
elderly trader was interrogated as if he were an Iraqi
spy and comments were made, where they could be
overheard by his family and friends, by some of the
"professionals" at the conference that implied his
mind was going. My husband and I spoke to him, and his
dialect and my dialect were quite similar. He and his
family and friends left the conference early. I don't
know if they ever returned, but the web pages at Warm
Springs don't seem to discuss the Wawa anymore.

This last year I came again and witnessed the
"professionals" lead off into tangents on issues that
were too complex to be resolved in the time allotted
for the Lu?lu - but were useful for shifting attention
from the language to the professional careers of those
making the statements.

> 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.

To understand our position, I invite you to come with
me to the next professional software specialty
conference I attend. After a few hours of listening to
people discuss arcania to which you have had no chance
of prior exposure to, and know nothing about, and have
no chance of obtaining any useful depth of information
about, you would perhaps have some sense of what we
have experienced.

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

Really - then how come so much discussion is devoted
to resources that are available to only a small subset
of the attendees? In the business world we call this
"corporate confidential" and only those considered to
be involved in the project are permitted access - and
those not offered access are considered to be
completely external to the project at hand.

> ***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.

Which seems to include keeping anyone who isn't a
professional linguist or a member of the tribe from
access.

> ***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,

Unfortunately for the validity of this statement,
there are no such language classes external to GR.

Until Jeff wrote, I was accepting of the idea that
there was a canonical dialect that might survive. At
this point my conclusion is that the survival of the
Wawa is more unlikely than before the project began.
There isn't enough of a base to make the language
sustainable at GR - and others have been withdrawing
in frustration.

>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.

But this is a vicious circle. The dialect is kept
private, so others cannot learn it, and then the
speakers of the GR dialect complain because others are
semi-speakers and not fluent - especially since they
are denied any real opportunity to study the dialect
unless they are tribe members - or professional
linguists.

> 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.)

Unfortunately, if a need isn't met, there are only two
realistic outcomes. The end user moves on to something
else, or groups attempt to fulfill the need.

In simple English, the Wawa becomes extinct, or people
find other ways to preserve it.

And there is also the matter that there is no de facto
canon at GR. Once again, the word "kwitshadie" comes
to mind - three years ago it was considered legitimate
at Lu?lu. This year it was incorrect. What will it be
next year? Four years from now?

There simply is no basic agreed upon canon.

> 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.

Unfortunately, my perception is that grant money seems
to add to problems as individuals become more inclined
to expand projects beyond the original scope in order
to obtain more grant money. B^) This is why zero-based
budgeting is popular in many businesses that are in
highly competitive industries.

> 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.

Translation: business as usual.

> 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

I think that we do *not* need more academics finding
new ways to debate the proper usage of hyphens. I
think we need to work on developing fluent speakers
before the darn thing goes extinct. I would recommend
also that the Wawa may go the way of Norman French if
groups like those from Warm Springs are routinely
slapped in the face as they were at that one
conference. When the mainland French ridiculed the
Normans, well, they just decided to get interested in
English. B^)

A language needs a base large enough that people will
use it - and preferably not in isolated pockets. A
population of two-three thousand appears to be
absolutely *minimal.* (Witness the almost complete
disappearance of the Yakama language in my own
lifetime. In the 1950s-1960s it was often heard, now
it is extremely rare and endangered if not actually
extinct for any practical purpose.)

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