The low-down on a couple of differences between the dialects
Here’s a low-down difference between the dialects of Chinuk Wawa that can be very prominent sometimes…
A couple of common expressions involving kíkwəli (Northern spelling = kikwuli), the word for ‘low; down; below) caught my attention as I worked with Father St Onge’s handwritten dictionary of the Central Dialect.
Image credit: IMDB
Here I’ll use his spellings:
- kikwile-tomtom
- Central Dialect ‘heart sick; dejection; conscience’
- Northern Dialect ‘humble’
- Southern Dialect ‘downhearted’?? it’s not in the Grand Ronde materials I have
- kikwile-hows
- Central Dialect ‘cellar; catacomb; basement; crypt; vault’
- Northern Dialect ‘the traditional Indigenous winter “pit house” ‘
- Southern Dialect ‘basement’
That’s a quick lesson in how folks can use various dialects of one language differently!
