Ikta Dale McCreery yaka t’ɬap (Part 5: ‘now’)
Our friend, the linguist Dale McCreery, posted a neat observation on the big Facebook “Chinook Jargon” group…
Image credit: Linked In
Dale wrote:
December 5, 2018: Chinook weirded out phrase of the day – Is this words from three languages put into one Chinook sentence? “Now Nayka Lip’tutulh” – This phrase was said by a man who had just got a new 4 horse boat motor and was trying to head out into the swells and kept getting pushed back to the dock. He yelled back “Now (english) nayka (CJ) lip’tutulh (Nuxalk) meaning now I am going backwards/returning my boat. He eventually gave up and waited out the heavy seas. My only question is – could it be Nawa nayka lip’tutulh – I forget if Nawa is a word that makes sense here and don’t have a dictionary handy —
This is me, Dave Robertson, talking again.
The short answer is “Yes”.
My research on British Columbia’s Northern Dialect of Chinuk Wawa shows that naw was indeed a CW word.
By no means did it replace alta ‘now’!
But it’s worth knowing that in actual speaking, BC folks have indeed used now in their Jargon.
