Cousins and siblings in Central Dialect
It’s not easy to find one word for a ‘cousin’ in Chinook Jargon.
Unlike some other kin relationships, such as mama and papa, the Jargon lacks a universally understood, single-word way of expressing being someone’s parent’s sibling’s child.
Another interesting category (image credit: Yarn)
The most surefire way to express ‘cousin’ across all dialects is in fact to lay out that chain of kinship: for example mama yaka ats yaka tənəs-ɬuchmən (keeping it all female here) is unmistakably your cousin who is your ‘mother’s sister’s daughter’.
In the younger Northern Dialect — centred on British Columbia — we also find some folks saying kosin, taken from English, and thus reflecting the Anglophone culture’s liking for a distinction between your closely related age mates.
In the equally young Southern Dialect — centered on Grand Ronde Reservation in Oregon — there’s a pair of extremely recent coinages for ‘cousin’: tílixam-áts (literally your ‘relative-sister’) and tílixam-áw (your ‘relative-brother’).
That strikes me as having Indigenous influence going on. At least, I’ve been told a number of times that traditionally a person doesn’t make a big distinction between one’s siblings and cousins in Native Pacific NW cultures. (Or for that matter, between your father and your uncles.)
In the oldest dialect, Central, I’d have to infer that things are even more straightforwardly culturally Indigenous:
Louis-Napoléon St Onge tells us, in his handwritten dictionary that I’ve been working with, < ow > (Grand Ronde dictionary: áw) not only means ‘brother’ but “ditto for cousin”!
And under his entry < kosin > (identical with the Northern Dialect form, and probably equally new) he notes, “see brother”.
