1896: A sentence a day on a single topic, Part 13
From Kamloops Wawa #142 (July 1896), page 155, one of the most vivid reading lessons I could possibly show you…
(A link to all posts in this mini-series.)
Rules:
- I won’t do a lot of explaining.
- You don’t have to be able to read the Chinuk Pipa original text, but I’ll show it to you. You can learn to read it as your Chinook Jargon gets stronger & stronger.
- Learn this:
Kakwa wiski wiht mamuk mimlus mokst
‘So alcohol again killed two’man.
‘people.’
So, in other words:
“Again, two men lie dead now because of booze.”
I was just wondering: Can we ascertain when and where approximately mimlus started getting used as the verb for “to die”, “to be dead” instead of the old Chinookan “dead body?”
In your lessons on Zoom, we occasionally talked about cases where mimlus was used as the “to kill” verb, but then it was always used by non-Native newspaper writers or white settlers. In good CJ, it ought to be mamuk-mimlus / mamook-mem(a)loos every time, a causative “die”, “make die”.
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