How to comment on someone’s roguish habits in Chinook Jargon
(I’m not talking about the Rogue Rivers đ) Why, we were just talking about this Chinook Jargon trick last night!
In our topnotch fun session learning an old song, we discussed kÉmtÉks- formations.
I reckon we have a way to say this is Chinuk Wawa! (Image credit: Amazon)
As a full verb by itself, kÉÌmtÉks of course means “to know; to understand; to remember”.
(At an early stage of Chinuk Wawa, it also meant any kind of perception, so it was used then in kÉÌmtÉks kÊ°apa q’wÉlaÌn “to hear” = literally “to know by ear”, and similar phrases.)
As a sorta prefix now, kÉmtÉks-Â has gotten extended to showing someone’s TENDENCIES or HABITUAL BEHAVIOR.
And it carries an overtone of shaking your head & considering that person kind of rascally.
So it’s a bit like saying “she sure knows how to run”:Â yaka kÉmtÉks-kuÌri. I’m showing an example in the Southern Dialect, of Grand Ronde, but all 3 dialects are able to make kÉmtÉks-Â formations.
A grammar note about it: kÉmtÉks- is followed by a predicate. You just need to remember, in the Jargon, even nouns can be predicates. So t’aÌlapus “coyote” in the Southern Dialect can also be used as “is/was/will be a coyote”. Thus — kÉmtÉks-t’aÌlapus is “to be tricky / a schemer / etc.” (Literally “to sure know how to be a rascally coyote” / “know how to be Coyote”!)
It’s not the most frequently used Jargon bit of grammar. But I reckon that’s only because we don’t spend all of our time talking a language exclaiming about someone’s incorrigible behavior…
Some good speakers of Chinuk Wawa, like Louis-Napoleon Saint Onge, have tried to figure out how to express fancty concepts like “linguist”, and wound up reaching for new kÉmtÉks- formations. I feel that those attempts haven’t been very successful, and this is exactly because of the overtone of “that rascal” that comes with kÉmtÉks-. See what I’m saying?
A last and important point: Tribal languages in the Pacific Northwest also have grammatical formations (and more) to express this kind of “oh there she goes being X” sentiment. Among my favorites is Spokane Salish ÊexÊ·, a particle you say at the start of a sentence; I’ll never forget my teacher, the respected elder Pauline Flett, telling a story that began “ÊexÊ· spiÌlye…“, “So there was Coyote, going along as usual…”!
Which is to say, our kÉmtÉks-Â formations in the Jargon may very well respect and reflect the linguistic priorities of PNW Indigenous people.
