Boas 1892: Many discoveries in a short article (Part 16: ‘to rest’)
Another word that we know as “typically Grand Ronde” (Oregon) was first documented at Shoalwater Bay, Washington…
Rest stop on Cowlitz River in Washington (image credit: Trip Advisor)
This word shows up in Professor Franz Boas’s tiny but super significant 1892 article, “The Chinook Jargon“:
Boas wrote it as < alē’m >, and translated it as ‘to rest’.
That’s alím in the 2012 dictionary of Chinuk Wawa from the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.
That dictionary hypothesizes a source in French aliment ‘food’, but admits that that’s a poor match for the meaning and sound of alím.
I have to add that Michif dictionaries, whose French is the closest thing to a document of the Métis speech that influenced Chinuk Wawa, just have a word li maanzhii ~ li mañzhii ~ li mawzhee for ‘food’. (As in standard French le manger, ‘the meal’.)
For that matter, we could consider one local pronunciation of the Michif word for ‘animal’, aen alimael. That’s a closer sound resemblance to CW’s alim — but, it’s still a very poor meaning match!
So instead, I have to report that this word alim must be SW Washington Salish (“Tsamosan”) in origin:
- Quinault has ʔalím[-]xʷ ‘to wait’
- Cowlitz has ʔál̓m[-]aq ‘wait, rest, wait for’,
varying with ʔáml[-]aq (with typically Salish metathesis moving consonants around in a root, which may help explain the following) - Upper Chehalis ʔá•m[-]q̓ ‘wait’
The existence of these forms leads me to suspect that a form more exactly matching Chinuk Wawa’s alím might have come from the 4th of the 4 SW WA Salish languages, Lower Chehalis. (But we haven’t found such a word yet!)
Going strictly by the available evidence I’ve reproduced for you in that bulleted list, it’s Cowlitz Salish that would be the most likely source, e.g. from Fort Vancouver’s days of prominence in the territory of that ethnic group. Only in Cowlitz do we know that the related root has been used in a meaning ‘to rest’.
In any case, Boas’s 1892 piece supplies important evidence of the hitherto poorly acknowledged role of Salish, and specifically Lower Chehalis Salish (which has historically been one of the languages of the Lower Chinookan people themselves) in shaping Chinook Jargon.
Bonus fact:
The modern speaker community centered on Grand Ronde has innovated a nice phrase using this word.
It’s alím-təmtəm, ‘calm, tranquil’.
Literally, ‘resting-hearted’.
