Culture lessons: Things Chinuk Wawa doesn’t do (Part 3)

Here’s another kind of thing we don’t do in Chinook Jargon, so pay attention and learn to talk fluently…

Image credit: Netflix

• ‘do a good deed’,
• ‘think a thought’,
• ‘bleed blood’,
• even ‘shed/cry a tear’
• or ‘write a page’.

This European rhetorical form, where the verb and its direct object are essentially the same idea, just doesn’t happen in Chinuk Wawa.

From one viewpoint, you could say it’s obvious that CW simply doesn’t “have enough words” to spare for such niceties.

I’m a linguist who disagrees with that wording — CW has thousands and thousands of distinct “lexical items”. It’s just that the majority of those dictionary entries are noticeably formed from 2 or more parts. I mean all the words made with the help of mamuk-, chaku-, tənəs-, etc.

And this language prefers to say things as verbs when it can. It’s historically been less interested in making lots of new nouns having precise meanings.

Which lead to this:

I’m also a linguist who agrees with that wording that I disagreed with, by the way. 🤔🤷‍♀️ The Jargon doesn’t like to be terribly redundant. It doesn’t like to say the same thing in many different ways.

Yes, this contradicts a lot of the old (kind of racially tinged) folklore that this is a “primitive” language, one that forces you to talk lots & lots before you can get your ideas across.

ON THE CONTRARY, nayka shiks, this language preserves the Indigenous value — as I understand things from exposure to elders — of saying what you mean.

We’ve proved over and over again, both conversation and sustained monologues in Chinuk Wawa prefer expressing things as efficiently as possible. In other words, this is a human language. It works like all human languages.

What I’m telling you is, Chinook Jargon could develop a vocabulary suitable for saying ‘she’s breathed her last breath’.

But that development would be a big divergence from the historic character of the language, as spoken fluently by countless thousands of people.

I remain an advocate for paying attention to, and honoring by learning & copying, Chinuk Wawa as spoken by elders and ancestors.

You’ll be amazed at how much you can express in this language, once you hush up and take in the true cultural heritage of this language.

Do I have to point out? — The same is true for learners of English, of French, of K’alapuya, of Takelma, of Salish…

Language is cultural behavior. Talking is an activity shared among people who agree (consciously or not) on a shared set of rules. The rules of Chinook Jargon are already set, so let’s learn & follow them.

qʰata mayka təmtəm?
What do you think?