Seasonal observation (Lillooet, May, 1894)

[David Robertson]

>From a letter sent from Lillooet Flats, which I take it is the Native 
village on the, um, downriver side of town (my bad sense of direction...but 
I mean the one with the "Rancherie" sign):

"Kupa iakwa Lilwat ilihi kanawi stik klaska lifs shaku krin alta pi wik 
saia ulali shaku."
 
(Literally: at here Lillooet village all trees their leaves become green 
now and not faraway berries come)

= "Around here at Lillooet village, all the trees' leaves are turning green 
now, and soon the berries will come out."  

Some very nice features of this letter include:

* The writer often uses the shorthand letter <u> where we'd find an <o> in 
the Kamloops Wawa newspaper (which was the literary standard, you could 
say).  This is not a misspelling, though.  It's very hard to confuse those 
two letters in the shorthand.  The <u> pronunciation is characteristic of 
good First Nations pronunciation of Chinuk Wawa.

** "Kupa iakwa" or <kopa yakwa> in many old dictionaries is typical of BC 
interior CW.  It has a meaning like "around here / hereabouts", as opposed 
to just plain "iakwa" which means "here".  

*** The writer didn't feel the need to say "kupa" (kopa) before "Lilwat 
ilihi".  This is another frequent feature of CW as used by BC interior 
Salish people.  They used less prepositions than most of the non-Native 
people I've observed.  

Cheers,

--Dave R

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