Lower Chehalis ‘boy baby’ etc. < CW
A very brief glance at a parallel between Lower Chehalis (Coast Salish) and a language that it helped give birth to, Chinook Jargon…
(Image credit: RedBubble)
Lower Chehalis has these words:
- stíʔxʷ is ‘man’
(so stíʔxʷ[-]uʔ is literally ‘little man’, thus a ‘boy’, just as in Chinuk Wawa) - x̣áʔq[-]aʔ is ‘child-ren’
So it’s a shared metaphor with CW when Lower Chehalis makes a compound word:
- stíʔixʷ x̣áʔqaʔ ‘boy babies’
In “the Jargon”, it’s long been customary to specify the gender of a large 😁 mammal, whether cattle or a human child, by preposing the word mán for male, or ɬúchmən for female.
So mán-tənás = a boy child or boy baby.
Get it?
