kopa tolo: An endless enigma
I sure enough don’t know everything there is to know about Chinook Jargon; just look at this example!
An old expression from the early-creolized, lower Columbia River world of Chinuk Wawa, is
< kopa tolo >
from page 11 of “Chinook Dictionary, Catechism, Prayers, and Hymns“
I can say with confidence that that would be represented in modern Grand Ronde spelling as kʰapa túluʔ.
But I’m totally mystified by this phrase!
Its literal meaning is ‘to (the) win’ — except, túluʔ is never used as a noun, in my experience of the Jargon. Only as a verb.
And to my knowledge, the language’s generic preposition kʰapa isn’t used with verbs. Only with nouns.
Plus, I can’t find any examples of this phrase being used in sentences.
And yet, Fathers Demers and Blanchet (and St. Onge, their editor) made a point of sharing their circa-1838 fluent knowledge of this expression with us.
A lesson you learn, if you do enough good research: not everything is knowable 🙂
Maybe I’ve got (once again) an Amerind etymology here :
– In related Zoque, kopak is head, which is also TOP.
– In Chamicuro (Arawak), nanatolo is STRAIGHT.
So “kopa tolo” can be interpreted like this : Straight to the top !
In Basque, we say “irabazi arte” (straight to the victory) which is allso a full sentence in itself.
Maybe it’s related to the religious stuff somehow. Like the “winning” of Catholicism/whatever against heathenism, or the good of god winning against the devil…??? I just feel like it’s probably refering to a very specific usage of “to the end” that these priests would be using.
I’m with you, my suspicion is that “kopa tolo” is just priest talk — along with the numerous French- and Latin-based technical words that they tried to get people to use in Chinuk Wawa (such as lekstlemoksio, lampel, impedimenta). The fact that “kopa tolo” isn’t exactly grammatical is probably a sign that it didn’t arise organically from spontaneous conversation, which is CW’s native habitat.
The words “end” and “head” are related in each and every language, so anyway whatsoever it would still mean “up to the head”.
My guess is this construction predated Chinook Wawa, but to me it appears definitely Chinook.
I think this is a (poor) translation of the Latin expression “Ad victoriam”, which Catholic priests/missionaries of the time would surely have been familiar with. In the absence of a Chinook Jargon noun meaning “victory”, they opted for the verb, and used it as a noun, complete with a preposition corresponding (more or less) to Latin “ad”.
Nicely spotted! Yours is the best explanation yet! Gratias ago — Dave