Indian CJ pronunciation sources and a few words

[Sally Thomason]

Ouch!  I apologize to Duane Pasco and other non-academics
for my overly academic message on the kinds of evidence
available for finding out how Chinook Jargon was pronounced
back in the late 19th & early 20th centuries, when it was
a (maybe the most) widespread lingua franca in the Pacific
Northwest.  I was probably wrong in thinking that that
was part of what the original questioner was interested
in knowing; I certainly didn't mean to imply, much less
claim, that there was a prescriptively correct way of
speaking the language.

But as for the pronunciation of CJ by speakers
of Lushootseed and other languages of the area that
have no M or N: there is indeed solid evidence that
speakers of those languages *did* pronounce M and N
when they were speaking CJ; there is also solid evidence
that they replaced CJ M and N with B and D when they
were using borrowed CJ words *when speaking 
their own native languages*.  I was really excited
when I discovered that -- I thought (and think) that
it's an interesting contrast.  But of course it's
entirely possible that not all speakers had the
same contrast, and even more possible that modern
speakers of CJ replace older CJ M and N with
B and D even when they're speaking CJ.  No linguist
would ever say that they're wrong to do so; but if
they do, it's an interesting change.

Anyway, again, I apologize for offending people.
I'll go back to lurking to make sure that I don't 
do it again.

  -- Sally

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