Hey, buddy! “Siks” is only a term of address (not a noun) in the Northern Dialect
Something made me launch this laptop-internal search utility that I use, to look for siks.
That’s famously a Chinuk Wawa noun for “friend”.
Image credit: Tiktok
Old writings by Settlers, typically reflecting the Central Dialect of the lower Columbia River area, often spelt it as six.
In the Southern Dialect, they now spell it shíksh.
But I notice, in all of the mass quantities of data I’ve accumulated on the Northern Dialect (estimated around 1,000,000 words of Chinook Jargon), only 1 single occurrence of siks as a noun, “friend”, turned up!
On the other hand, hundreds of occurrences of the Northern Dialect number word siks “6” are found.
So, point #1:
The adoption of English-sourced words for the numbers higher than 5 in the Northern Dialect would have the effect of crowding out the long-entrenched siks in its meaning “friend”.
Point #2, though:
We nonetheless often find both Settlers and Native people in the Northern Dialect region back in the day greeting people with Klahowya, six! (And spelling variations on that.) Meaning, “Hello, friend!”
That phrase was so famous that both words of it entered Pacific Northwest English. Lots of people who didn’t speak Jargon knew the meanings of klahowya and six.
So, point #3:
Six / siks is only a term of address, in the Northern Dialect. Not a noun.
That is, siks in the North is more accurately translated as “hey, buddy!” and suchlike. Not as “a friend; the friend; some friends” or similar.
This little piece of research helps clarify my own thinking. In the Northern Dialect, I had long marveled at the lack of siks “friend” in the Kamloops Wawa newspaper, and in people’s letters. Now I can see that these same people apparently understood and used the word — but only as a very casual, in-person greeting.
(They don’t even use it at the start of the letters, where instead they often say Naika tilihum, naika tikki wawa kopa maika = “My friend, I want to talk to you”.)
Bonus fact:
It’s very much like the Indigenous Pacific NW languages to have separate words for referring to & for addressing someone you have a relationship with. That’s the etymological origin of Chinuk Wawa’s áts “sister” and áw “brother”, as a matter of fact. (And probably naʔa/naha “mother”.)
