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 English “long I”, phonetically a spoken [ay] diphthong. (As in the word “Maya”.)
In the case of that first word above, the common spelling “Siwash” led to the frequent pronunciation, especially in Pacific Northwest English, [sáywash]. (To use another English spelling, you might represent this as “sigh-wash”.) 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] “spelling pronuncations” of CJ /á/: pretty far along in the language’s history, circa 1855.
Repeating for emphasis: this is when Chinuk Wawa started to be written and read — no longer only spoken — by a significant number of folks. I.e. Settlers. Widespread literacy among Indigenous nations became a factor only a generation or two later, with the government-run “Indian school” system.
Coincidentally, that’s when a couple of even bigger changes in the language happened: the foundation of the Northern and Southern dialects.
In the case of the Northern dialect, which was more Settler-influenced than the Southern, you heard more of these “book pronunciations” of some Jargon words.
Here’s a list of further PNW words (plus one from Florida/Alabama), in this case all official place names (therefore Settler-influenced!), and all from Native languages, whose original /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. Waatch (from waʔač in 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.
- Editing on 03/18/2025 to add the word “zydeco”, a music style whose name comes from Louisiana French “(le)s haricots” ‘beans’!
Bonus fact:
A separate case where < a > and < i > have alternated in spellings is Chiloquin (“chíll-a-kwin”), Oregon, earlier spelled Chaloquin. In this case the first vowel sound appears to have been something like /i/, with a common variant Indigenous pronunciation as [e]. So “Chaloquin” was probably said as “chéy-la-kwin”.
Now, 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)], the “long A” sound of English.
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. Chinuk Wawa < clataway > for what was actually pronounced /ɬátwa/.
There’s also the folksy “Californ-eye-ay” for “California“…
