1924: Sky phenomena in northern CW

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A rare clear glimpse at how northern Chinuk Wawa expresses various things that go on in the sky…

You bet it’s distinct from the southern dialect!

I should say that the first column of words here will be JMR Le Jeune’s attempt to phonetically represent Chinuk Jargon in English or French-style letters.

The second column is Chinuk Pipa, British Columbia’s unique alphabet for the Jargon.

The third column is of translations into English by this native speaker of European French (and of Breton Celtic).

weather phen 1

weather phen 2

weather phen 3

  • tloos ska’i     tlus skai     good [i.e. ‘clear’] sky
    Literally: ‘good/nice sky’. Northern Chinuk Wawa doesn’t know or use southern kúsax̣ for ‘sky’. 
  • bloo ska’i     blu skai     blue sky
    Northern CW doesn’t have southern pchíx̣ ‘blue/green’.
  • pi cha’ko win     pi chako win     then comes wind
    A common expression related to this is what’s written in Chinuk Pipa as “aias win”, a big wind, a gale, etc. 
  • sa’hale=smòk     sahali smok     smoke[-]like clouds
    Literally: ‘the above-smoke’. This a very old expression in Jargon, common to both dialects. 
  • snaz     snas     rain
  • snò     sno     snow
  • a’iss-snaz     ais snas     hail
    Literally: ‘ice-rain’. Northern CW doesn’t have the older/southern expressions for ‘ice’, like ‘hard rain’. 
  • pi ook’ook ha’ha pa’ya ko’pa sa’hale
    pi ukuk haha paia kopa sahali
    and that awful [i.e. amazing] lightning up above
    This haha is found as x̣ax̣aʔ ‘sacred, holy’ in the 2012 dictionary of the Grand Ronde tribes. A good word to know. The literal translation of the whole expression is ‘and that sacred fire up above / in the sky’. That is, (kopa) sahali is also used for ‘(in) the sky’ in northern CW. More commonly, I’ve found “laitnin” for ‘lightning’. 
  • pi skoo’koom wa’wa, ka’kwa poos poo a’yoo a’yaz mos’ket
    pi skukum wawa, kakwa pus pu ayu aias moskit
    and terrible noise as if the shooting of many big guns 
    I would actually translate this Jargon expression for thunder as ‘and loud noise, as if big guns were shooting’. In actual usage, much more often I’ve found what’s written as “thondir” in northern Chinuk Wawa. 

— from JMR Le Jeune, “Chinook Rudiments” (1924), pages 21-22

ikta mayka chaku-kəmtəks?
What have you learned? 

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