Nice example of tíki = ‘try’
I’ve recently written about how Chinuk Wawa expresses ‘attempting to do’ something…
(Image credit: AZQuotes)
And here’s a lovely example of one of those strategies in action, the use of tíki ‘want’ in a sense ‘try’.
I recently came across this translation of a scene following the death of Jesus, and right away it struck me as crystal-clear:
Tlus msaika kopit tiki
ɬúsh msayka kʰəpít-tíki
good you.folks stop-want
‘You folks should stop trying‘nanich iaka kopa mimlus ilihi…
nánich yaka kʰupa míməlus-ílihi…
see him in dead.people-place…
‘to find him in the cemetery…’
— Chinook Book of Devotions (1902), page 140
I have to admit, in an observation added to my previous discussion of ‘try’, that this current example works so well because it’s semantically negated. That is, the Zenlike ‘stop wanting’ is really expressing about the same thing as ‘don’t try’.
I feel that non-negated instances of tiki are usually a bit less clear in putting across the idea of ‘try’. And that may explain why BC Chinuk Wawa of the 1890s did that thing that it did so well — borrowing a newer, more exact word from locally spoken English, trai.
