Culture lessons: Things Chinook Jargon doesn’t do…asking ‘WHAT to do’, ‘WHAT to say’, etc.
It’s extremely well documented in the Northern Dialect that we don’t usually ask ‘What should I do?’ etc.
Image credit: How Do You Do? podcast
Instead it’s normal to literally talk of ‘doing how’…
- Kata naika mamuk?
‘What shall I do?’ from Kamloops Wawa #132
Literally ‘how shall I do?’ - Kata iaka mamuk?
‘What did she do? from KW 131
Literally ‘how did she do?’
(Our examples today are in “Kamloops Wawa” spellings from 1890’s British Columbia.)
We even find:
- Pi kata nsaika?
‘And what are we to do?’
Literally ‘and how are we to do?’ - …kata Shisyu Kli pus iaka mitlait kopa ukuk ilihi
‘…what Jesus Christ did when he was on this earth’
Literally ‘…how Jesus Christ [did] when was on this earth’
The above pair are nice examples, showing you don’t even need to add a verb in there to get the ‘do what’ sense! (My view would be that kata itself is the verb here, meaning ‘do how’…a very Salish idea.)
And it’s not just DOING that’s spoken of this way in Jargon. It’s also THINKING and SAYING:
- Kata maika tomtom?
‘What do you think?’ KW 51
Literally ‘how do you think?’ - …k’olan kata iaka wawa
‘to hear what he said’ KW 97
Literally ‘…to hear how he said’
I’ll keep it that simple.
Needless to say, this DOING/THINKING/SAYING HOW pattern is Indigenous in origin.
I hope you learn & use this feature of Chinuk Wawa culture & thinking.
