A, I, O and sometimes Y: Even more about writing PNW indigenous words weird
I’ve found even more examples supporting my observation that old-time spellings of Chinook Jargon words often wrote < i > (or < y >) when they meant [á].
You know, like < Siwash > for sáwash ‘Native person’, and < silex > for /sáliks/ ‘angry; to fight’. And even < tyee > for táyi ‘chief’.
“AEIOU Sometimes Y”, by Ebn Ozn (image credit: Youtube)
Of course we’re talking about the ways people literate in English represented Chinuk Wawa.
For many dialects of North American English — North America being the most relevant to the Settler era in which most of the first CW dictionaries were written — the letter < i> or < y > could frequently indicate a spoken [ay] diphthong.
In the case of that first word above, the common spelling “Siwash” led to the frequent pronunciation, especially in Pacific Northwest English, sáywash. Which, in terms of spoken Chinook Jargon, had previously been a non-existent way of saying the word.
Notice, then, that we’re able to assign a date to the innovative, Settler-oriented [ay] pronuncations of CJ /á/: pretty far along in the language’s history, circa 1855.
Coincidentally, that’s when a couple of even bigger changes in the language happened: the foundation of the Northern and Southern dialects.
Here’s a list of further PNW words (plus one from Florida/Alabama), in this case all place names, and all from Native languages, whose /a/ sounds sometimes got represented with orthographic < i > or < y > by Anglophones (and furthermore, sometimes by English-style < o >):
- Wynoochee, Washington, from Lower Chehalis Salish x̣ʷənuɬču ~ x̣ʷanuɬču.
- “Wyatch Creek”, WA, a.k.a. Waach (from the Wakashan language Makah).
- “Klapot” Point, WA, from Chinuk Wawa < Kla-pite > ‘thread; twine’.
- Opa-Locka (FL) and Opelika (AL), from a Muskogean language such as Creek.
Bonus fact:
A separate case where < a > and < i > have alternated in spellings is Chiloquin, Oregon, earlier spelled Chaloquin.
In this case the first vowel sound appears to have been something like /i/, with a common Indigenous pronunciation as [e].
This brings up the related English-style writing custom of using < a >, even at the ends of Native words, to indicate a pronunciation [e(y)].
That’s surely how folks arrived at writing < kanawa > for kʰánawi ‘all; every’, for instance! (We know that kʰánawi varied with a pronunciation kʰánawey, due to PNW Indigenous influence.) Similarly, Settlers were accustomed to writing < Iowa > for the name of the tribe also known as the < Ioway >.
And then, similarly to the repercussions of < i / y > that I mentioned above, Settler folks sometimes over-corrected themselves, and wrote e.g. < clataway > for what was actually pronounced /ɬátwa/.
Editing on 03/18/2025 to add the word “zydeco”, which comes from Louisiana French “(le)s haricots” ‘beans’!
