Seasonal observation (Lillooet, May, 1894)
Francisc Czobor
fericzobor at YAHOO.COM
Wed May 3 07:41:54 UTC 2006
Very interesting, thank you, Dave.
Again my question: why did he write "sh" (shaku) where a "ch" would be expected?
Is this also a trait of the BC interior CW ?
Francisc
David Robertson <ddr11 at COLUMBIA.EDU> wrote:
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 where we'd find an 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 pronunciation is characteristic of
good First Nations pronunciation of Chinuk Wawa.
** "Kupa iakwa" or 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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