Planning: The monolingual Chinook Jargon dictionary
…or “dictionaries”, of each dialect….
Image credit: Wikipedia
The monolingual Chinook Wawa learners’ dictionary that I want to create will naturally cross-reference between naturally related categories — e.g. with some pronouns:
- I reckon defining okok, in part, as {(iht tanas-wawa) poos k’ilapai-wawa kopa “ikta?”} (“(a certain word) to give an answer to “what?” “),
- and defining ikta? in Northern Dialect as {(iht tanas-wawa) poos ask “poos okok, poos okok?”} (“(a certain word) to ask whether it’s this or it’s that”).
(We may find ourselves using “iht tanas-wawa” so much that we abbreviate it as “i.t.w.“) 😊
In the same way, the Yes/No question particle na will be cross-referenced with the positive and negative interjections nawitka & heilo / weik.
These seem like reasonable, if laborious, solutions for explaining the meanings of abstract grammatical stuff.
In comparison, a lot of verbs may be easy to define —
e.g. mamook-mimaloos (“kill”) = mamook poos kopitt-ilii iht tilihum / iht ikta (“cause some person or thing to no longer be alive”)
(Again, we may find ourselves using a frequent abbreviation “i.t/i.i“!)
Nouns may mostly be even easier than that —
e.g. tloochmin = iht haiyas tilihum heilo man yaka (“a grown person who isn’t a man”) or some such.
I see huge value in a monolingual dictionary, for learning & teaching: it will keep people’s minds within the world of Chinook Jargon, not slipping into their first language as they work on new vocabulary.
