Re-creolization + re-Métis-ization in the Grand Ronde reservation community
POINT #1: The earlier form of the word for “tongue” and “language” appears to have been the Central Dialect’s lalak.
Image credit: Family Search
Lalak is an expectable Chinuk Wawa, Indigenized, pronunciation of Métis/Canadian French la langue [lalãg]. We see it as far back, at a minimum, as the Fort Vancouver (WA) region data in Demers, Blanchet, and St Onge.
By the time of the elders who worked with Henry Zenk, resulting in the splendid 2012 Grand Ronde Tribes dictionary of what I’ve come to analyze as the Southern Dialect, they were saying lalang.
They had restored the word to something more closely resembling the etymological source.
I feel the best hypothesis for why, and how, this could’ve happened is the known presence of Francophone Métis families from French Prairie, for instance, in the Grand Ronde Reservation community.
(Were there some from additional locations, such as the Umpqua Valley?)
Grand Ronde tribal people could not have “put the N sound back in” to make an accurate restoration of the original French way of saying a word, unless they were hearing Francophones of some kind.
POINT #2:
Similar stuff went on at Grand Ronde with French “R” sounds.
At earlier phases of the Jargon, these “R’s” famously got Indigenized into [l], or else lost:
- French courez! => Chinuk Wawa kúli ‘run’
- l’herbe => láb ~ láp ‘kinnikinnick for smoking’
But, at a later stage, Grand Ronde rez CW tended to restore the [r]’s!
- kúli => kúri
- láb ~ láp => lárp
Much (well, only broadly) like Montana Salish chopping off everything past the stressed vowel of a word, it would be impossible for GR CW speakers to have known where to put “R” sounds.
The people of sháwásh-íliʔi couldn’t just turn random “L” sounds into “R’s”, you know?
And they couldn’t just stick stray “R’s” into words that had none, eh?
…not if the result was going to precisely match North American French (including Michif) pronunciations…
…unless they had exposure to actual fluent speakers of North American (not European) French.
And I’m talking about a lot of exposure, not just hearing “R’s” as rare variant pronunciations on the rez.
And I mean the Francophones in the community must have been accorded some kind of folk authority as speakers of (some of) the best Jargon.
MY TAKEAWAY:
It was specifically speakers of North American French dialects, and therefore of Métis French, who left this huge imprint on the Southern Dialect of Chinuk Wawa.
As the language re-creolized (see lots of previous posts by me using that word), it also re-Métis-ized.
The Jargon was a Métis language from the moment it took coherent shape, circa 1810. With the coalescence of a new community at Grand Ronde rez, 1855+, it became Métis anew.
A point:
Sharp thinkers will realize this implies that the Francophone Métis families of the area may have preserved some nasal vowels & R’s in their particular Chinuk Wawa, prior to 1855.
Just think what that may have sounded like!
Another point:
By talking about “re-Métis-ization”, I’m not calling the Grand Ronde Reservation community anything other than Indigenous. It’s a multiethnic group. Métis are just one of the groups in it. I’m just talking about a new wave of them contributing their influence to Chinuk Wawa.
