AF Chamberlain’s field notes of Chinuk Wawa from SE British Columbia (Part 5)

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Wuht naika wawa marsi kopa Dale McCreery, yaka t’lap pi mamuk-nanich ukuk kopa nesaika.

(Here’s a link to all the other installments in this mini-series!)

How about if I highlight in orange some new, exciting discoveries?

At least one of the words here may be new to you, my reader (if you’re more fluent in Southern Chinook Jargon), but are already well-known within our reading of Northern-dialect CJ.

Ketc is kind of new news to me, too, in that I’m used to finding the more obviously Pidgin English-style ketchim in British Columbia CJ!

There are plenty of instances below of the very Northern Dialect pronunciation [ä], or call it [æ] if you like.

AF Chamberlain CW Kootenays 5

  • Ínātái ‘Across, opposite, on the other side, over there.’
    [I’m not sure why Chamberlain has 2 accent marks here; maybe the first one was meant to be the “long i” sound of ī?]
  • Ínātái tcEk ‘Across the river.’
  • Ípcūt ‘To hide, to conceal; secret, hidden; unseen; secretly.’
  • ÍskEm ‘To receive, to take, to get, to obtain, to hold, etc.’
  • Kā́’E ‘Where, whither.
    [Chamberlain’s phonetic notation suggests the unusual pronunciation /káʔə/ or /qáʔə/.] Kónāwē kā́’E ‘everywhere.’
  • Kākā ‘Crow.’
  • Kā́’Ekwā ‘Like, as; same as, equivalent to.’
    [See my comment above at ‘where, whither’.]
  • Kälā́kälā́ ‘Fowl, bird, partridge, grouse.’
  • Kälipī́n (F[rench].) ‘Gun, rifle, fire-arm.’
  • Käláitan ‘Arrow, bullet, shot, etc.’
  • Kä́mās ‘Camass-root (Camassia edulis).’
  • Kä́mūks ‘Dog.’ Ténäs kä́mūks, ‘puppy.’
    [Literally ‘little dog’.]

flume

A gold-mining ‘canoe’ in the Kootenays of BC (image credit: Lost Kootenays)
  • Kāním ‘Boat, canoe; riffle (flume) in hydraulic gold-mining.
  • Kāpó (F.) ‘Coat.’
  • Käpswấla ‘To run off with, to steal, to rob.’
  • Käpswấla klū́tcman ‘To run off with, to rape a woman.’
    [This is an old sense of English ‘rape’, to ‘abduct’. Literally, ‘steal a woman’, and actually used in all Jargon dialects as ‘commit adultery’ with her.]
  • Kā́’Etā ‘How, why, wherefore, what.’
    [See my comment above at ‘where, whither’.]
  • Ketc (E[nglish].) ‘To catch, to seize, to get.’
  • KÉltEs ‘Worthless, useless, no good, of no value, of no use, etc.’
  • KÉltEs hīhī ‘Joke.’
    [Literally ‘pointless laughing’.]
  • KÉltEs klä́tawā ‘To pretend to go away; to go away to no purpose.’
    [Literally ‘pointless going’.]
  • KÉltEs mä́mūk ‘To act silly; to “cut up”.‘
    [‘Pointless behavior’.]
  • KÉltEs män ‘Worthless person.’
  • KÉltEs mítlait ‘To sit or be idle; doing nothing, lazy.’
    [‘Pointlessly being there.’]
  • KÉltEs mítlait ‘To be empty; empty, nothing there.‘
    [A nice semantic “minimal pair” with the preceding entry’s sense.]
  • KÉltEs wā́wā ‘To talk nons[ens]e; nonsense.’
    [‘Pointless talk.’]
  • KÉmtEks ‘To know, to understand, to be able to, can; knowledge.’
    [This entry continues in the next installment!]

ikta mayka chaku-kəmtəks?
What have you learned?

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