Chinuk man = interpreter
It’s several years since I shared my find of Chinuk man, as the term for “interpreter”, with the then rather smaller Jargon community. This is a word worth making better known, as this linguistics paper does.
It comes from the above-shown snippet of Kamloops Wawa #149 (February 1897), page 26. The words you see are these:
<15. St Mark.> Sin Mark.
15. St. Mark. Saint Mark.Sin Mark iaka Sin Pitir iaka intirpritir, kakwa
Saint Mark was Saint Peter’s interpreter, likeiaka Chinuk man; kimta iaka mamuk cim iht…
his Chinook man; later he wrote a…
I always prefer being able to back up any find I make in Chinook Jargon, and usually once I notice a “new” word, I do find it somewhere else.
That’s happened here. I’ve been listening to some audio that SV Johnson recorded in his dissertation research, and the unnamed male speaker refers to a Chinuk man having been brought along to the 19th-century treaty negotiations with local tribes.
There too, it’s made clear that an interpreter is meant. So we have confirmation.
Whew, because my avatar here at the Chinook Jargon blog is shorthand Chinuk man!
Wait – did you say audio?
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Why yes, I did say audio. Wonderfully enough, more and more audio recordings keep turning up from older generations of Chinuk Wawa researchers. (So we now finally get to add some phonological data to our understanding of the language.)
SV Johnson worked with some of your neighbours, Dale: he lists “Schooner, Andy” and “Hrenyson, Albert” (sic?) of “Bella Coola, B.C.” among his sources. But neither of these guys seems to be in the audio that’s made its way to me.
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I was thinking about the Squamish Chinook man living at Mission IR No. 1, mentioned by Lascelles. Are you saying that it translated more broadly than translating x or y into or out of Chinook?
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Hi Marcia,
In the Bible quote, yes. In the context of 1890s British Columbia life, probably always with a ‘Chinook Jargon’ association!
I haven’t seen the Lascelles book, and it looks like copies are expensive. Would you be able to share a quotation or two about this Squamish Chinook Man?
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Can I send you a doc. In the mean time, I have a part of a document in which Louie Miranda (Squamish–excuse old fashioned spelling), mentions the “Chinook-man” for the Mission (IR No. 1) as Tim Moody. /Users/marciacrosby/Desktop/Chinook Man.png
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