“Lakamin” unknown in (coastal) Northern Chinook Jargon?
My sources tell me that Habakkuk in the Bible makes a batch of “stew“…
And here we have that expressed in Chinook Jargon as ‘cooking up some flour (to be) like a soup’.
Sounds like lakamin, the Jargon word for a stew, often with dumplings — so, why 3 words to put that idea across? Look here…
Habakkuk brings Daniel some lakamin (image credit: Christian Iconography)
<336.> Ilo wiht klaksta patlach makmak kopa Daniil kopa
‘336. Nobody else gave food to Daniel for the’taham son, pi iaka chako olo. ST mash iht lisash
‘six days, and he got hungry. God sent an angel’kopa Shirusalim kah mitlait iht iaka profit, Habakuk iaka nim.
‘to Jerusalem where there lived one of his prophets, named Habakkuk.’Ukuk profit mamuk kuk saplil kakwa sup, pi iaka lolo ukuk
‘This prophet cooked up some flour like a soup, and took this’makmak kopa iaka hwit ilihi pus patlach kopa ukuk tilikom kakshit
‘food to his wheat fields to give to the people cutting’iaka hwit tipso. <X> Lisash wawa kopa iaka: “Lolo ukuk
‘his wheat plants. The angel told him, “Take this’makmak kopa Daniil iaka mitlait alta kopa Babilon tawn, kopa laion haws.”
‘food to Daniel, who is now in Babylon town, in a lion cage.” ’
— “Kamloops Wawa” #134 (November 1895), page 169 (Bishop Durieu’s Old Testament)
I’ve previously reported that lakamin was known in the Salish language of the Kamloops region, Secwépemc. We can wonder, why wouldn’t it be used in “Kamloops Wawa”?
It’s important for us to remember that the above passage was composed by Bishop Paul Durieu, who worked on the coast, not in the interior region around Kamloops. And there’s significant archival proof that Durieu found Kamloops Chinook Jargon a bit odd.
So, what I believe today’s reading passage shows us is confirmation of something we already suspected — lakamin is known only in interior, not coastal, PNW languages.
And this, as always, makes enormous sense. The Métis/Canadian fur-trade French influence out here strongly tends to stick to the areas where First Nations had close, sustained dealings with Francophones. That’s the same as saying the region of direct French influence is from the area of Fort Vancouver, on up the Columbia drainage and into central BC.
Let me point out, Secwepemctsin is the farthest north I’ve found the word lakamin loaned into Indigenous languages so far; it’s way more characteristic of the (middle and lower) Columbia River watershed.
Bonus fact:
By the way, another translation I’ve seen for what Habakkuk cooked up is ‘lentils’. Funny, that’d be easy enough to translate into Chinuk Wawa as ‘peas’, lipwa. Huh.
