A note on ‘mid-July’ in Quinault Salish
In historically documented Chinuk Wawa, and in Quinault Salish, there’s just one calendar month that gets any particular verbal reference: July.
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The Chinook Jargon nod to ‘July’ is this:
- háyásh sánti ‘the 4th of July’ — literally, ‘the big Sunday’ — which could also be taken as ‘the big week’ of celebrations.
Quinault Salish, the farthest up the coast of the Southwest Washington Salish (“Tsamosan”) languages, actually borrowed the English name of one month, as did several other PNW languages…and in each of those cases, the month is ‘July’, as in Quinault’s word:
- pán-juláy ‘time of July’
That borrowing could have occurred directly from “July” in locally spoken English.
Here in the States, you’d definitely hear folks talking plenty about “(the Fourth of) July” in frontier times and after. It was the very biggest civic festival, countrywide.
But I’d suggest, really strongly, that Chinuk Wawa was also involved: the Jargon contributed enormous numbers of words to Quinault Salish, whereas hardly any direct loans from English can be found there.
Now, let’s look at the following occurrences of ‘July’ in Quinault:
- pút-juláy ‘middle of July’
- pán-pút-juláy ‘during the middle part of July; during July’
This pút-juláy, I admit, has to come ultimately from English: “Fourth (of) July”.
But again, most likely this phrase entered Quinault speech as an item in local Chinook Jargon, a language spoken more fluently by far more people in the area than English. And I remind you, the CJ term for the 4th of July can be understood either as the specific ‘big day’, or as the broader-scale ‘big week’ somewhere in July.
Maybe this phrase pút-juláy shows us, not just an Indigenized pronunciation, but also a trace of a sort of pidginized, second-language English among the Indigenous people of the Quinault Reservation: an English where folks weren’t aware that “fourth”, and “of”, and “July” are supposedly separate words.
Interesting thoughts.
But, also, pút- (from English “fourth”) happens to sound exactly like the Quinault Salish prefix that means something like ‘right in the middle of’, inherited from an older Salish form that can also mean ‘real; prototypical’.
So, local folks re-interpreted pút-juláy as “really meaning” something new: ‘middle of July’.
Does that make a ton of sense?
No — I dare say as a non-Quinault — no way at all.
I’m trying to say to you, the Quinault elders who consulted with the maker of the 1971 dictionary were brilliant, and their deep insights into their own language are on full display in that precious document.
But — I dare say as a professional linguist — in the case of pút-juláy, those elders were indulging in a typical extension of that kind of brilliance.
They were folk-etymologizing.
I have real doubts that pút-juláy functioned as a label for a concept of ‘middle of July’ in the Quinault language.
Why?
Because,
- who on earth has a name in their language for just one of the 12 calendar months,
- and also has an even more specific word meaning ‘middle of’ that month,
- which is not a highly significant specific time more deserving of a name than all other times of the year?
In other words, as I analyze it, pút-juláy is a borrowing of English “4th of July”, into Chinuk Wawa, then into Quinault Salish.
And, to cap it all off, after pút-juláy had gotten re-analyzed by Quinaults into {Salish prefix+ JULY}, the same community of speakers could’ve been inspired to also use a different Salish prefix pán- with JULY.
