‘Obey’ in 2 dialects of Chinook Jargon: an Indigenous metaphor?
In the phenomenal “Joe Peter” transcription session for this week, we saw how that elder translated ‘obey’ in the oldest, Central Dialect of Chinuk Wawa:
Image credit: Teach LDS Children
ɬaska kə́mtəks yaka wáwa
they hear his word
‘they obeyed him’
This construction, ‘hear someone’s words’, is recognizably similar to how ‘obey’ is put in the newer, Northern Dialect:
pi heilo tlaska iskom yaka wawa
but not they (choose.to.)take his word
‘but they didn’t obey him’
The similarity to me is that both of these dialects use a verb phrase for ‘taking in someone’s words’, to mean ‘obey’, ‘heed’, and also often ‘pay attention to’ someone.
It’s entirely possible, with this wide geographic occurrence of the same basic idea, that this metaphor goes quite far back into early Chinook Jargon history.
I notice in the Upper Chehalis Salish and Cowlitz Salish languages of SW Washington (the homeland of Chinuk Wawa), the expression for ‘obey’ is tal=áy̓in, which I take as having a literal meaning like ‘to accompany by hearing’. I doubt that that formation is due to CW influence, as it’s not a very literal correspondent of ‘hear someone’s words’. It might instead have helped inspire the CW phrase(s).
Bonus fact:
The SW WA Salish formations along the lines of ‘accompany by hearing’ seem to me to imply a different concept of ‘obeying’. They sound more like ‘go along with what someone is saying’.
Insofar as I understand the ethnographic descriptions of our region’s traditional cultures, this could make a great deal of sense. Traditional authority rests on people’s voluntary consent.
This is a very different concept from what’s in European languages and cultures. There, ‘obeying’ is mandatory.
However, in a marvelous coincidence…the English word ‘obey’ traces its origins back to Latin ob-oediō ‘to listen to, harken’!
