Jargon lesson from "Kamloops Wawa"

[David D. Robertson]

Hi, all,

Being treated to Jordan Lachler's fine little daily Haida lessons, and
Tsimshian words of the day, on his lists makes me feel inspired
(read 'guilty') to put up more Chinook Jargon instructional material here.

>From "Kamloops Wawa", December 1894, #123, page "200" -- whatever that
means -- comes this little delight.  Father LeJeune wrote it because of all
the mail he was receiving that was written in the shorthand alphabet in the
1890's.  (It may have been Lillian Zeh's 1906 article that claimed letters
addressed in shorthand in BC were often delivered just as handily as those
addressed in English.)

I've added dashes to link together the parts of compound Jargon words.


(shorthand alphabet transliterated into email alphabet; stuff that's
already written in English letters in the original is shown here in <angle
brackets>:)
<B.C.>
pus msaika mamuk-cim ukuk ilihi iaka nim,
mamuk-cim <B.C.>, ilo mamuk-cim Bisi.


(word-for-word gloss in English; glosses longer than 1 English word are
connected by periods:)
<B.C.>
if you.folks make-write this land it name,
make-write <B.C.>, not.at.all make-write Bisi.


(translation:)
<B.C.>
If you folks are writing this province's name,
write <B.C.> [in English], don't write Bisi [in shorthand] at all.


A few notes:
-- Chinook Jargon has 2 separate words for "you".  <msaika> is plural and
means "you folks; you all".  <maika> is singular and means "you" (one
person).  (That's 'mesika' & 'mika' in the old-fashioned dictionaries.)

-- <mamuk-> is what we call a causative, when linked with a following
word.  In this particular case, it's linked with <cim> (that's 'tzum' in
the old-time dictionaries) meaning "marks; writing".  So the combination of
the 2 literally means "to make marks; to make writing happen", which
understandably means "to write" in reality.

-- <ilihi> (that is 'illahee' in the old dictionaries) essentially
means "land; place", and depending on the context it takes more specific
meanings.  In the example above, it clearly means "province".

-- To show that one thing/person (like <ilihi>) possesses another
thing/person (like <nim>), follow this formula:
POSSESSOR <iaka> THING.POSSESSED
...where <iaka> means "him/her/it; his/her/its".  So for example, <ilihi
iaka nim> means literally "province its name" ==> "province's name".

--  In some varieties of Chinook Jargon, you can use <ilo> (which is 'halo'
in old dictionaries) to mean "not at all; nothing".  This is distinct from
<wik> (or 'wake' in the old books), which means plain simple "no".  So
in "Kamloops Wawa", these 2 sentences have slightly different meanings:
<Ilo mamuk-cim!>  =  Don't write at all!
<Wik mamuk-cim!>  =  Don't write!

--  You might find it interesting that people probably were addressing
letters written in shorthand Chinook Jargon, with the province
written "Bisi" also in shorthand.  The shorthand more or less spelled
things as they sounded, so this suggests that "Bisi" was a word in B.C.
Chinook Jargon!

--Dave