AF Chamberlain’s field notes of Chinuk Wawa from SE British Columbia (Part 7: Breaking ground, breaking camp…)
Again, I’ll highlight in orange some stuff that’s a new discovery for us!
(A link to all installments in this mini-series!)
There’s evidence here of Chamberlain having heard & used Chinook Jargon in the course of his British Columbia fieldwork.
- Klōc nä́nitc ‘To take care, to be careful; Take care! look out! see to it!’
[Literally ‘watch well’.] - Klōc tÉmtEm ‘Happy, glad, feeling well.’
[Literally ‘good heart’.] - Klū́tcman ‘Woman, female.’
Ténäs klū́tcman ‘girl, [literally] little woman;’
käpswấla klū́tcman ‘to rape a woman.’
[Literally ‘steal a woman’.] - Kō ‘To reach, to get to, to arrive at, etc.’
- Kōcṓ (F[rench].) ‘Hog, pig; pork.’
- Kóktcit ‘To break, to injure, to destroy, to kill, to spoil, etc.; injured, hurt, broken, spoiled, destroyed, etc.
Mä́mūk kóktcit ‘to cause to be broken, etc.;’
kóktcit ílahī, ‘ground that has been dug, or “broken,”
ténäs kóktcit, ‘a little hurt, or spoiled.’ - Kóktcit tī́pī ‘To take down a tent, to break camp.’
[We hadn’t seen this phrase, nor the word ‘tepee’, in Jargon until now.] - Kōl (E.) ‘Cold.’
- Kōl ílahī ‘Winter.’
- Kónāwē ‘All, every.’
- Kónāwē kā́’E ‘Everywhere, all over.’
- Kṓpā ‘At, in[,] about, on.’
- Kōpḗt ‘To stop, to cease, to leave off, to end, to finish; ende[d], finished, complete, done; the end; enough.’
- Kūlī (F[rench].) ‘To run, to go fast, to go about.’
[In the rest of the northern dialect, I consistently find this verb to only mean ‘travel, go about’, with speakers putting the word for ‘fast’ before it if they mean ‘to run’. Chamberlain may have been influenced by his knowledge of French courir here.] - Kwalä́lkwalä́l ‘To gallop.]
[It’s a surprise to find this southern-dialect Chinookan onomatopoeia in the north, where such things are rare!] - Kwán’sEm ‘Always, forever; continual, lasting, permanent.’
- Kwas ‘Afraid, frightened; tame; fear;’
Hḗlō kwas, ‘not afraid’
[using the normal northern-dialect negator hilu],
haiyū́ kwas, ‘cowardly, much afraid.’
[Typical of the northern dialect, hayu is here used the same as hayas- ‘very’.] - Kwā́tE (E.) ‘Quarter of a dollar, twenty-five cent piece.’
- KwÉnEm [sic] ‘Counting.’
[Also a surprise to find in the north, and we’d expect the last consonant to be “n”.]
