“Old” varies by dialect
Going from North to South through the 3 dialects I recognize in Chinook Jargon…
Image credit: Instagram
- Northern Dialect:
- We find plenty of ol, as in ol kluchmin (synonym of lamiai “old woman”), Ol Pol (“Old Paul”), and as a stative verb in e.g. ol iaka (“(s)he’s old”).
- The form ol man also gets used, both as a noun and as a descriptor that’s limited to a pretty literal meaning, coming before an animate male noun: ol man papa (“old father”), ol man tilikom (“elders”).
- Central Dialect:
- For St Onge, oleman only; not *ole*.
- Therefore he uses oleman as a descriptive adjective before all sorts of nouns: oleman chikamin “junk”, oleman ship “hulk”. Way back when, Demers – Blanchet – St Onge 1871 told us:
Olman
[means] old man. It is said for all old things.
- Southern Dialect:
- úl & úl[-]man both seem as if confined to human reference in elders’ speech.
- úl is definitely used by newer generations of speakers in the way English uses it, referring to inanimate and abstract things as well as animates.
- ALL DIALECTS use ánqati for “old” as in a thing or person that was around a long time ago. As you can infer.
