1900, Lake Chelan: “nayka hilu wawa ukuk hayas-kʰəltəs wawa!” 😂😁🤣
Guess which dialect of Chinuk Wawa they were talking in north-central Washington at the Turn of the Century?
Northern Dialect, as naturally as cones grow on ponderosas.
Diagnostic indicators include:
- the use of halo (hilu) for sentence negation (instead of wik),
- the hyas- (hayas-) prefix for intensification (instead of the full-word adverb dret),
- and tilacum (tilixam) for ‘friend’ (instead of s(h)iks(h)).
Look at this accurate report of a Jargon conversation with, presumably, a Wenatchee Salish woman; I appreciate the writer’s sympathetic tone, rare for its time:
We visited an Indian ranch [village] on the Co-
lumbia river, where two lumei (old wom-
en) lived. One, who looked to be near
90 years of age, sat on the ground making
mats of tules with a long wooden needle
threaded with twisted cedar bark, making
it so neatly that a stitch could not be seen.
When finished, she used the mats to dry
peaches on, laying the mats on board
racks. She had packed her tules four
miles from the lake, over the mountains,
and had twisted the thread from cedar
bark; yet she was one of “them lazy si-
washes!” The orchard contained a fine
assortment of fruits. Her companion was
blind and lay on a mat in the shade. Ask-
ing her, “Clahowa six, mika cumtux
Chinook wawa?” (How do you do, friend,
do you understand Chinook?) she an-
swered. “Nika halo cumtux Chinook! nika
halo wawa; nika tilacum halo wawa; hyas
cultas wawa” (I do not understand Chi-
nook; I do not speak it: my people never
speak it. It is a good-for-nothing lan-
guage). She talked right along in Chi-nook, saying she never spoke it, she or her
people, and did not understand it, finally
winding up with a song and begging, in
her own tongue.I made the old mat maker a small gift
as I started to go, and her face broke into
smiles and she said: “Closh! Closh; Nika
tilacum, chaco tomala.” (Good; Good; you
are one of my people; come tomorrow).
There were a number of stone imple-
ments by her door, which are still used.
— from “Lake Chelan, Scenic Marvel of Washington”, in the Seattle (WA) Post-Intelligencer of March 25, 1900, page 30, column 6
I might interject that nika tilacum doesn’t mean ‘you’re one of my people’. It’s just ‘my friend’.
- lumei = lamiyáy = ‘old woman’
- siwash = sáwásh = ‘Native person’
- Clahowa six, mika cumtux Chinook wawa?
= łax̣áwya síks, mayka kə́mtəks chinúk wáwa?
= ‘Hello friend, do you understand the Chinook (Jargon) language?’ - Nika halo cumtux Chinook! nika halo wawa; nika tilacum halo wawa; hyas cultas wawa
= nayka hílu kə́mtəks chinúk! nayka hílu wáwa (Ø); nayka tílixam hílu wáwa (Ø); (Ø) hayas-kʰə́ltəs wáwa
= ‘I don’t know Chinook! I don’t talk it. My people don’t talk it. It’s a real no-good language.’ - Closh! Closh; Nika tilacum, chaco tomala.
= łúsh! łúsh, nayka tílixam, cháku tumála.
= ‘All right! All right, my friend, come tomorrow.’
