Why is shouting so new in Chinuk Wawa?
Chinuk Wawa kʰriyé / kʰrí, a synonym of kʰ(i)láy, means ‘to yell, holler, shout’.
(Image credit: Briar Patch magazine)
It’s obviously Canadian/métis French-looking; compare crier in that language.
kʰriyé / kʰrí might, like other French-to-CW words, come from commands, criez!/cri!. I wonder about deriving it from a negative ‘don’t shout at me!’… Read on.
I think kʰriyé / kʰrí is a newer word for ‘cry, weep’ in the Jargon. I don’t seem to find’ it in any dictionaries of CW published before the 2012 Grand Ronde Tribes one.
Matter of fact, it seems not to be documented until Grand Ronde times, somewhere later than 1855.
What also strikes me is that the GR synonym hála ‘shout’ (from English ‘holler’) is of similar vintage.
The only way of expressing yelling in earlier times and other places was the Indigenous-language-derived skúkum wáwa, literally ‘to talk strongly’ — which also means things like ‘to boast’.
We linguists find it rewarding to assume that there’s usually some good reason motivating any change in a language.
Why would Chinook Jargon have lacked a specific word for ‘shouting’, until the Reservation era?
My hypothesis is that shouting isn’t something you often do to strangers who you’re talking Jargon with. Shouting in the stereotyped setting of a fur-trade post would get you kicked out and sometimes beaten up.
You’re more likely to holler at people you have enough contact with to develop some tensions.
On the GR reservation, folks from a large number of ethnic groups were suddenly shoved into close proximity with each other.
We’re told that there were various ethnic fault lines on the Grand Ronde reservation, e.g. the southern Oregon tribes versus the northern ones.
A number of insult-words in Chinuk Wawa seem to date to such a time and environment, for example the GR CW ethnic insults t’ilímuksh and k’alapúya.
So there you have a sketch of one researcher’s thinking about the evolution of vocabulary for verbal conflict in the Jargon.
That’s interesting. I’m not surprised GR would have, perhaps, many French derived terms as early on many French Canadians married Willamette Valley and lower Columbia natives. What are the terms around ferry-men or ferries? I know in Hanis, on the narrow part of the bay on the spit side was a place called “hollering place” based on the Hanis verb to shout, yell, holler k’al/k’el. It was a ferry spot – if someone came down the spit and needed a canoe ride to all the villages on the Empire side of the bay, they would holler for someone to please come give them a ride.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Such an excellent question! I showed an old cartoon here once about a Native ferryman talking Jargon. But I don’t know much about the terminology for that. Literally all I got for ya is the village name “Kuks Pali” in BC, that’s Cook’s Ferry.
LikeLike
Do you think that KCW ‘krai’ is the same word or might be be an even later English lone?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Or the same as k(i)lay
LikeLike
A continuation of the old word, I’m betting.
LikeLike
Looking at the entry for hayash in our 2012 Grand Ronde dictionary, I see another small oversight (I really really hope that we will be able to do an updated corrected version someday): hayash-wawa is given there with the meaning ‘tell someone off, scold them severely’; on the other hand, one of the example sentences under the head entry (hayash) gives hayash-wawa with the meaing ‘talking raising my voice’. No doubt hayash-wawa in context could be used for ‘shout’. There is also hayash-kʰilay in the dictionary, given as ‘cry out loud, scream, howl’. Note also that kʰriye ~ kʰri is given with the meanings ‘cry out, holler, yell, scream’. I suspect that some of our later elder speakers equated kʰri with English “scream” (possible folk etymology?).
LikeLike
hayash-kʰilay, thanks for mentioning that one! In its sense of ‘cry/scream/howl’, it seems to me like an extension beyond the original meaning of kʰilay.
Regarding a second, even more excellent edition of the CTGR dictionary, you have my yes vote. A major ask would be for each entry to show all formations that the headword occurs in — not just the ones where it’s the first element. You might even be able to hire this linguist to work on that 😉
LikeLike