kakowan yaka pishak

[David D. Robertson]

Klahowyam,

Just a little more about the phrase for "orca".

"Kakowan" , as opposed to "kawaad", has the ring of a Vancouver Island
Southern Waskashan language, and specifically not Nitinaht (Ditidaht); not
surprising since it comes from the manuscript Jim found of an "Oh-yaht"
tale in Jargon.

"Kakowan" presumably shows reduplication of the initial "K" sound in the
stem also found in Makah as "kawaad".  I don't know what initial
reduplication means in Nootkan, but it's likely to be a grammatical process
in those languages.

"Kakowan yaka pishak" looks like a relative clause meaning "the orca that's
savage".  Maybe "kakowan" alone would be enough to specify the meaning
of "orca", or maybe not (say, if "dolphin" is also "kakowan"), though I'm
unaware of any substantial body of recorded Jargon from that area of
Vancouver Island that would prove this.  The word may have been unfamiliar
anywhere else.

"Pishak" occurs in a number of Chinook Wawa vocabulary books as a synonym
for "masahchie" = "bad".  There's at least on variety of Jargon
where "pishak" has a meaning like "bad(lands)"="wild(erness)".  There's
also at least one variety (Kamloops Wawa) that seems to lack "pishak"
entirely.  Note that "pishak", too, is a Nootkan word.

--Dave

On Tue, 4 Feb 2003 19:34:15 -0800, Scott Tyler <scottmd at ATTBI.COM> wrote:

>Bruce,
>kakowan yaka peshak
>
>kawaad means 'big on back' referring to the large dorsal fin
>this phrase literally means "big backs are bad"