Chinook Wawa from BC: AUDIO!
Here’s a lady who was recorded, I believe, by British Columbia’s late great oral history interviewer, Imbert Orchard.
This is a just a short audio clip, and I haven’t been told any information about the speaker. But I think I hear a number of reasons to think she was a good Chinook Wawa speaker of English-speaking background:
- Pronouncing “kloshe” with completely voiceless “tl” in which the “t” is not prominent, and with the /u/ vowel instead of /o/ — both also Aboriginal-oriented norms.
- Saying the vowel of “kloshe” fairly unrounded and umlauted (fronted), a sound I associate with Tsimshian-speaking regions.
- Using the /pus/ form, which tends to reflect an orientation to Aboriginal people’s best CW practices — as opposed to the generally Anglophone-oriented /spos/ or /pos/.
- Subtly but measurably deploying “hyper-lengthening” of stressed vowels for expressive discursive force in the second clause, /naika dlet kwas/, especially on the final two words.
- Saying the schwa at the end of “maika” with slight fronting in the mouth, which is characteristic after “k” in several BC Aboriginal languages, particularly of the Coast.
- Simultaneously displaying telltale Anglophone traits like “d”, unreleased word-final “t”, and aspirated “k” before “w”.
Further questions: Who’s the speaker? Who was she quoting, and what was their ethnicity? When was this interview done?
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I’m almost positive this is Constance Cox, born and raised in Hazelton BC, lived all her life there, daughter of the founder of old hazelton, her uncle and father were in Barkerville, and she was a fluent speaker and translator of both Gitxsanmx and Wetsuweten, having learnt them both as a child and having worked as a government translator as well as nurse and teacher, and amazing story teller. I could be wrong, but I’ve been listening back and forth to her speaking and my recordings I have from Imbert Orchard’s interviews of her done in the fifties. this sounds like the same interviews, just cleaned up a drop.
the aspirated k I think makes sense if this indeed constance as aspiration in word final consonants is standard in Gitksanmx
Thanks for your valuable insights, Dale. These provide us some much-needed context for understanding the recording.