CJ lesson for 1/11/04

[David D. Robertson]

Hi, here's a reading selection for you to practice Chinook Jargon.  It's a
paragraph from Kamloops Wawa.  Here's how it works...


* -First there's a line of Jargon.  Line breaks follow the original.
* An English gloss runs word-by-word below the Jargon.
* And my translation into English runs on every third line.
* <Items in angled brackets weren't in shorthand in the original.>
* [Items in square brackets are added by me.]
* (Numbers in parentheses refer to my notes after the paragraph.)


-Taham tintin pi sitkom nsaika tlap kopa iht ilihi iaka nim
ten hour and half we get to a place its name
At ten-thirty we got to a place called
-Fild.
Field
Field [in Alberta].

-Iakwa nsaika nanich iht aias makmak haws, drit aias.
here we see a big eating house(1), real big
Here we saw a big inn, very big.

-Pi kimta kopa ukuk makmak haws mitlait iht drit aias sahali
and after from this eating house is(2) a real big(3) high
And behind this inn was an extremely high
-mawntin(4), iaka <10500> fut sahali kopa oihat; pi oihat
mountain, it 10,500 feet high from path; and path
mountain, 10,500 feet above the track(5); and the track
-iaka <4050> sahali kopa solt chok.
it 4,050 high from salt water
is 4,050 [feet] above the sea.

-Kimta wiht mitlait
after also are
Beyond, there are
-mawntin <12000>, pi iht <13000> fut sahali kopa kah nsaika
mountain 12,000 and one 13,000 feet high from where we
mountains that are 12,000 and one even 13,000 feet above where we
were
-mitlait.
were.

(1) makmak haws:  literally "eating house," it's the Kamloops Wawa term
for an inn where you can stay the night as well as get a meal.
(2) mitlait:  basically "to be located somewhere," so it's understandable
that the word can also be used for "to exist; there is/are..."  Sometimes,
a further meaning of the word is "to have."
(3) aias:  literally "big," it's also a word for "very" in Kamloops Wawa
and in many varieties of Jargon.
(4) mawntin:  another word for /lamotai/.
(5) oihat:  a train journey is being described, so this word refers to the
tracks of the railway.

General note:  Jargon is different from English...it doesn't mark the time
when something happened.  So, in English we can tell if something already
happened, is happening, or will happen (like with "I ran" / "I'm
running" / "I'll run").  In Jargon, each verb has just one form, so all
three of those examples would be /naika kuli/.  Also, English clearly
tells you whether just one thing, or more than one thing, is being talked
about:  "mountain" has a very different meaning from "mountains."  There's
just one form of each noun in Jargon, so these would both be /mawntin/.
You have to pay close attention to what's being talked about when you're
reading Jargon, or having a conversation in it.  Can you see why I've
translated /mitlait/ sometimes as "is", sometimes as "are", and sometimes
as "were"?  Can you also see why I had to translate /mawntin/
as "mountain" in one place, and "mountains" in another?

Best wishes on learning Jargon!  Special thanks to Keith Carlson and SSHRC.

--Dave R.