There’s religious Chinuk Wawa, and there’s religious Chinuk Wawa (genuflect vs. kneel)
A recurring phrase in “Kamloops Wawa” #73, #74, #75 from 1893 tricked me!
This phrase is always in the form “mamuk ni kopa ilihi”, every time that the phrase occurs (literally ‘make knees/a knee to the ground’) — never just mamuk ni ‘make knees/a knee’.
Image credit: YouTube
That should’ve been a clue to me. I took this phrase to mean ‘kneel’. But I was wrong! It’s ‘genuflect’.
I’m going to show you examples from page 63 of issue #74, because they show the difference between the super-frequent word ashnu and this mamuk ni kopa ilihi.
(Here I translate iaka as ‘they’ when it refers to the “servant”, because nowadays we have both altarboys and altargirls.)
You’ll also learn some other real-world church terminology here.
By “real-world”, I mean it’s church stuff that people actually talked about in Jargon, often enough to have understandable words for it.
I see a difference here from a lot of the more abstract Christian terminology in Jargon, which tends to be Latin words or French “big” words that you’ll only find in some manual.
Not coincidentally at all, the “real world” religious words in the Northern Dialect tend to employ the layer of newer, English-sourced terminology that folks were already using in everyday conversation. So here you’ll find ni ‘knee’, stip ‘step’, and shik ‘shake; ring (a bell)’.
Pus kopit
when be.finished
‘After the’
gospil, iaka wawa “Los tibi Kristi,” pi iaka ashnu.
gospel, they say Laus Tibi Christe and they kneel.
‘gospel, they say “Laus tibi Christe”, and kneel.’… … …
Iaka shako kopa sitkom, iaka mamuk ni kopa ilihi pi iaka
they come to middle, they make knee to ground and they
‘They come to the center, genuflect and’
ashnu kopa ilip sahali stip. Pus liplit mamuk ni kopa
kneel on most high step. when priest make knee to
‘kneel on the top step. When the priest genuflects,’
ilihi, sirvan shik tintin tlun taims.
ground, servant shake bell 3 times.
‘the servant rings the bell 3 times.’
So there’s a contrast being made between 2 things you do with your knees here. As a cradle Catholic, I should’ve caught that difference sooner than I did 🙂 Here’s the math:
Ashnu = ‘kneel’ = 2 knees.
Mamuk ni kopa ilihi =‘genuflect’ = 1 knee.
Both of these are exclusive to the Northern Dialect. But the older, “early creolized”, Fort Vancouver version of the Southern Dialect did have a related word for ‘kneel’, shenu.
