Public service announcement: “alki” is not the future tense
Or, the Alki Point 🙂
In the interest of sharing knowledge of good Chinuk Wawa, I want to share how to use the words that you’re usually told mean “future”, “present”, and “past” tense.
Because that’s wrong. In the documents of Jargon that we possess, you can usually spot a Bastən. They overuse these little words, which in reality are kind of infrequent…because they’re essentially optional.
English speakers have had a habit of over-literally translating, word for word, from English structures into the Jargon. That’s why some of them have “alki” everywhere that they’d say “will” in English — and “ankati” everywhere they’d say “did” such-and-such in English — and so on.
Think instead of these 3 little words (which you’ll come to love) as adverbs:
- ankati means “formerly”
- alta means “presently”
- alki means “eventually”
I promise you, if you follow this guideline, you’ll rarely have difficulty knowing how to use these 3. If a sentence you’re saying really calls for specifying “formerly”, “presently”, or “eventually”, you’re probably best off using the relevant adverb. But if your sentence doesn’t quite call out for one of these words, you are likely just fine leaving them out.
I want to share a couple real examples from Kamloops Wawa that brought this point to mind for me. Issue #72, page 53:
… kakwa iaka mamuk komtaks kopa iaka pipa kopa ayu tkop tilikom pus kanawi alki iskom [NULL] …
(…so he is letting lots of White people know through his newspaper so that [they] all might eventually subscribe to [Kamloops Wawa]…)
Same issue, page 54:
… klaska iskom tamanwas kopa iaka. Pi alki tlus tilikom klaska shako pi klaska lolo blish shok …
(… they got Indian (shaman) medicine for him. But eventually some good people came and they brought [Catholic] holy water …)
Same issue, page 55:
Iawa iaka wawa: Naika kopit alta.
(Then he said: I’ll be “done for” presently. [And he died 5 minutes later.])
Remember, too, we mentioned the other day that alta is used as a connector: “and then…and then…”
And, to remind you that ankati can also be an adjective, from page 54:
Klaska kwanisim skukum tomtom kopa ukuk ankati Sawash mamuk.
(They kept clinging to the former Indian ways.)
This is me talking now:
Wal naw alta klunas msaika kopit kwanisim skukum tomtom kopa ukuk msaika ankati Boston mamuk kopa Chinuk!
(Well now, maybe you folks will stop clinging to your former White ways of Chinook talking!) 🙂
I know that looking back at the archives of our old CHINOOK listserv of 17 years ago, I wince like crazy to see how poor my Chinuk Wawa was. Pi alta skukum naika mamuk kopa ukuk… (But then I worked hard on it.)
Just as I long ago absorbed the factoid from my Washington History teacher that the motto on our state’s seal, alki, “means ‘by and by’ “, and never once paused to wonder what that expression meant, I have learned better. So can you!
“Naika kopet alta.” This brings up the question of where to put these temporal determinatives. I’m wont to deploy a topic-comment sentence structure, putting them first. And I’ve seen some evidence of this, especially given that GR wawa stresses the adjective should come before the noun in a copular sentence like this. So “Alta kopet naika”. But of course there are many examples otherwise and otherways. Can we say this is a regional difference? If these temporal markers have regional differences, where would you draw the isogloss?
I’m also still fascinated by the variations on whether and how to use kopa versus pos versus a topic-comment possessive construction in conjunctions. I recall you saying somewhere that white settler wawa tends toward overuse of kopa, yes? But as some of these examples show, it looks like a northern thing amongst natives, too.
Well, anyway, obvious I like to understand these divergences in sociolect and dialect, so forgive my multiple queries! 🙂
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Queries are welcome. Naika aias tlus naika tomtom kopa maika tiki komtaks Chinuk. You bring up a useful feature of adverbs, in this language and most others: Freedom of placement. You can place your adverb at, usually, your choice of the beginning of the sentence, right before the verb, or toward the end of the sentence. The variance in meaning that comes with this is small. So, for “I used to go hunting” in the Kamloops variety of Chinook Jargon, you might say any of these:
1) Ankati naika klatwa kopa mawntin.
2) Naika ankati klatwa kopa mawntin.
3) Naika klatwa kopa mawntin ankati.
Adjectives are a different game. Word order matters. Attributive adjectives (like “a small ___” and “the tasty ___”) stand immediately before the noun. Predicative adjectives (in copular sentences like “I am ____” and “the sky is ___”) are able to go either before or after the subject. So:
Attributive:
skukum kluchmin “strong woman”
pil chikmin “red metal” (copper)
Predicative:
Tlus naika.
or
Naika tlus. …both meaning “I’m okay.”
KOPA versus PUS: The normal use around Kamloops was that KOPA was the all-purpose preposition, expressing even purpose (“for…”, “in order to…”). That left PUS as the indicator of conditional/irrealis mood, that is states of affairs that you’re not claiming have actually happened (yet). This “irrealis” sense is so strong that it is used even in questions, along with question-words like “what, who, how”. Whites, however, showed a tendency to use PUS in any instance where they’d use “for” in English, leading to some confusion.
KOPA:
Stalo tilikom mitlait kopa Skrawlich. “Stolo people live at Scowlitz.”
Klaska chako pi lolo naika kopa mamuk lamas kopa iawa. “They came and fetched me to say say mass over there.”
PUS:
Ilo naika tiki pus iaka klatwa. “I don’t want her to go.” (I don’t want that she should go.)
Pus kata msaika tlap ukuk? “How did you folks manage to find that?”
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A specific example where White people tried to use ANKATI, ALTA, and ALKI as tense markers: Kamloops Wawa issues #75-77, among others, carry an “English Lesson” on the last page. The English past is always translated with Chinook Jargon phrases using ANKATI, the future with ALKI. (And the present progressive — “I am going” — with ALTA.)
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