“Dilate nika ou”
(Dedicated to Paul.) You know who I appreciate? My readers!
It’s people like Alex Code who send me the Chinook Jargon they find in their reading.
Image credit: Etsy
That’s the backbone of this website. Naika wawa masi!
Here’s one of Alex’s clippings, about the founder and curator of the British Columbia provincial museum:
They will not forget the telephone incident on the Fraser, for example, wherein the late Mr. Fannin amused himself at the expense of the untutored India. This telephone — before the instrument became a common servant — had been run between two cannery buildings. The Siwashes could not comprehend its mystery. Said one of them to Fannin, “nika halo kumtuk.” Fannin explained, elaborating with the information that the telephone was the white man’s communication throughout this and all other worlds.
The Siwash stared skeptically.
“My brother,” he explained in labored Chinook, “he died last month. You talk to him.”
Mr. Fannin promptly advised the anxious relative that he had the desired connection.
“Where Peter now,” was the next interrogation, “and what does Peter say?”
Without a moment’s hesitation Mr. Fannin responded that Peter was unhappily in hades, and that he wanted a bottle of whiskey and wanted it quick.
The Indian was convinced.
“Dilate nika ou,” he philosophized — “quonsum tikke whiskey.”
— from “Jack Fannin is No More” in the Victoria (BC) Progress of June 25, 1904, page 7, column 1
Putting that Northern Dialect dialog into a modern spelling: Naika heilo kumtuks “I don’t get it.” And: Dleit naika ow kwanisum tikki wiski “My brother really did always like a drink.”
I’m not a whiskey person, but I have it on good authority that my late brother told similar jokes on his deathbed!
Bonus fact:
The more common word for ‘brother’ in Northern Dialect is brotha.
But we also know ow.
