Happy belated Victoria day, part 2
Yesterday I shared a Secwepemc girl’s tree-bark (!) postcard congratulating Queen Victoria on her 60th anniversary on the British throne.
reasonable facsimile
Today (in shorthand French): how that message was received.
Də d se kart postal õ ete ãvwaie
Two of these postcards were sento dyuk d Norfolk pur etr presãte a la ren;
to the Duke of Norfolk to be presented to the queen;də otr o lord Ryusel; də u
two others to Lord Russell; two or<4> otr a sir Yuilfred Lorie, prmie
4 others to Sir Wilfrid Laurier, premierdyu Kanada.
of Canada.L dyuk d Norfolk a ete ãshãte d lãvwa
The Duke of Norfolk was enchanted with the packagee a kõvwaie yun ptit som darjã pur ede ləvr d
and conveyed a small sum of money to help the work oflĩstryuksiõ de sovaj a letyud [d] la stenografi.
instructing the Indians in the study of the shorthand.E tu derniermã yun letr a vnyu dyu guvernər
And quite recently a letter has come from the Governorjeneral dyu Kanada, kõtãdã* k le kart postal
General of Canada, (telling) how the postcardsave ete depose* ã presãs d sa majeste
had been placed in the presence of her majestyla ren Viktoria.
Queen Victoria.
— Kamloops Wawa #158 (November 1897), page 166
(I remind you that reading French in shorthand is quite a bit harder for me than Chinuk Wawa, mainly because it’s so hard to distinguish the nasal vowels without a bunch of practice.)
The 15th Duke of Norfolk, Henry Fitzalan-Howard, was Postmaster General at the time, which by itself might account for his delight at the novelty of exotic Indian (birch?)bark postcards.
Iʹm unclear exactly who “Lord Russell” was, but interestingly, this may have been a close relative of the important philosopher Bertrand Russell.
The Governor-General of Canada at this time was the Earl of Aberdeen (Lord Aberdeen).
Any living Canadian has probably held a picture of Sir Wilfrid Laurier in hand. He’s lived long enough to prosper on the frequently defaced $5 bill.
This week we’ve learned of some pretty cool research leads for materials that are apparently in Chinook Jargon. No scholars have ever written about, or probably even knew about, these bark postcards. Time to go looking for Laurier’s, Russell’s, and the Queen’s little shorthand treasures!
Tomorrow I can post about another item that’s going to be nice to track down…
“”yun letr a vnyu dyu guvernər
And quite recently a letter has come from the Governor
jeneral dyu Kanada, kõtãdã* ******k le kart postal
General of Canada, (telling) how the postcards
ave ete depose* **** ã presãs d sa majeste””
——
I think that ”’kõtãdã* “”” is an incomplete sequence, perhaps because the repetition of the nasal vowels did not “look” right on paper: most likely it should be French
“”””content d’enTENDre QUE””” les cartes postales …
‘happy to HEAR THAT the post cards. ….
In the next line I am not entirely sure about the verb:
… avaient été déposéES en présence de Sa Majesté ..
… had been DELIVERED/DEPOSITED (??) in the presence of Her Majesty.
I think this sentence implies that the Queen was not just told of these postcards but actually saw and perhaps handled them, whether brought to her in person by the usual delivery staff or shown to her before being put in some archive.
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p.s. Is there more possible space in the space in kõtãdã* —— k ? the French sentence would be even better as
”””content d’enTENDre DIRE QUE””” les cartes postales …?
… happy to HEAR IT SAID THE …… ?
(in colloquial spoken French the sequence “entendre dire” would omit the -re in the first word, and the preceding D might disappear as well).
‘
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Is “contente” (f.) plausible? The word looks like that, now that you open my eyes.
I really need to teach you, Stéphane, and Dale the sténographie Duployé. With your feel for the language, you will certainly have an easier time than I of reading the faded text. And as a team, we can unlock a large amount of ms. material written by les oblats.
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Dave, Marie-Lucie, and whoever else may be interested inter alia in the history of French in Western Canada: I’ve an alternative. What if “kõtãdã” actually stood for “contant dedans” (where “contant” is the present participle of the verb “conter”)? Thus the meaning would be “A letter came from the Governor general of Canada, telling (inside) that the postcards…”. It fits the meaning perfectly, and only requires that the geminate /dd/ was written as /d/.
Also: “yun letr a vnyu”. It is a peculiarity of Metis French that AVOIR was generalized across the board to verbs which are normally conjugated with ETRE, “venir” being one of them. This may be the earliest written example of this linguistic innovation. And I am sure other specimens of French in shorthand will give us a better idea of the chronology of various innovations in L1 and L2 French in Western Canada…
As for working on these documents myself…I’m game. Anybody know where we could get some funding?
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Here is a nice sample of French-language Duployé shorthand written by its inventor, with a transcription in standard French writing.
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