Some CJ borrowings around here

[David D. Robertson]

Lhush san, Bernard,

Thanks for these words.  All the words you list below come from Chinook
Jargon.  That's a near-certainty, given that they occur in cognate forms
in many unrelated languages that have historically interacted with CJ.
(There's other evidence, too:  For example, geographically scattered
varieties of CJ have used cognate forms of these for the same concepts.)

It's kind of interesting how Lillooet took the first L in 'key' (/l-kli/),
alternated it with N as can sometimes happen in Northwest languages, and
then had a word that looked like it should mean 'the KLI that you put into
things'.  (Because /n-/ is a prefix in Salish that means 'in, into.')

Another interesting thing is that lots of people around Lillooet still
know the word 'mowich,' a sign of how widespread the Jargon was at one
time.  And it's considered an 'Indian' word -- think about that.  People
know it's not in English, and it barely even sounds like a potentially
English word.  So it's understandable that First Nations and other people
might all refer to it as an 'Indian' word, at the same time that some
First Nations people normally refer to their tribal language as 'Indian'
with a pretty different connotation.

Let me suggest that -men 'person; occupation' isn't a suffix in the
Lillooet language, though it is in Thompson Salish.  Why not?  The two
cases you quote below are compounds which have the same form in good CJ as
in Lillooet, so they can be considered straight borrowings out of Jargon.

Now if Lillooet had some definitely Lillooet words that were showing up
with the ending -men in this meaning, then we'd be seeing a grammatical
suffix in action.  (Inventing an example, let's say 'eat' in Lillooet
is /ilhten/; if we found a word /ilhtenmen/ meaning 'a cook, a chef,' that
would be evidence for a suffix similar to the one in Thompson.)

Something to think about over the lattice fries poutine at Lou's!  :-)

--Dave R.




On Wed, 5 Nov 2003 13:20:33 -0800, Bernard Schulmann - home
<bernard.schulmann at LILLONET.CA> wrote:

>Hey there all
>
>The local aboriginal language has integrated some French words such as
>leputay for bottle and nkli for key and lasel for salt.
>
>The suffix -men is some uses very clearly a borrowing from english
>(local St'at'imc word for American was bostonman and ts'inamen being a
>chinese person (sp on both))
>
>But at the same time I have found there are some words that are oddly
>close to German, but clearly not borrowed (I am a native German speaker)
>
>In the one St'at'imc community of Ts'kw'aylaxw, there are certain words
>people consider 'indian' but at are CJ - best example I know is mowich
>for deer (the St'at'imc word being Ni(sp?))
>
>yours
>
>
>Bernard Schulmann
>Lillooet BC