spakram

[Francisc Czobor]

Klahowya!
   
  In Le Jeune's "Chinook Rudiments" (Kamloops Wawa No. 1739, 3 May 1924, http://chinookjargon.home.att.net/ljcr24.htm) there is a word for "flowers" not found elsewhere: "spakram" (on page 22; it appears also on page 23, in the name of one of the "thirteen moons" [months]: 5. spakram moon "flowery moon".)
  It seems that this word is from the Ntlakapmuk (Thompson), a Salishan language that, as far as I know, was spoken by the Native people in the Kamloops area.
  According to J.B. Good's "A vocabulary and outlines of grammar of the Nitlakapamuk or Thompson tongue (the Indian language spoken between Yale, Lillooet, Cache Creek and Nicola Lake) together with a phonetic Chinook dictionary, adapted for use in the province of British Columbia" (St. Paul’s Mission Press, Victoria, B.C., 1880 http://www.canadiana.org/ECO/PageView/02276/0002), the Thompson word for "flowers" is _spakum_. Saanich has a quite similar word: _speq'EN_ "flower" (http://www.cas.unt.edu/~montler/Saanich/WordList/).
   
  Francisc

 
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