Etymologies: the huge family of Lower Chinookan -skan, and the huge value of back-translating
I’m not here to criticize my academic great-grandfather Franz Boas, I’m here to help folks understand Indigenous languages a bit better, just like him.
Us Columbia Lions stick together.
Cutting right to the news: I suspect these 2 Chinuk Wawa words have the same etymology:
- uskan ‘cup, dipper, can’
- latsikʰan-stik ‘oak’
Here’s some background from some work I’ve been doing on Alexander Ross’s marvelous very early Jargon vocabulary (early 1810’s), with < spellings from his 1849 book > set off in angled brackets:
- < useun > [sic] ‘kettle’,
is LC (Lower Chinookan) /ú-šgan/ ‘bucket’ (same root as in #178, Boas 1894:166), ‘basket, cup’ (Boas 1910:603), < ús-kan > ‘cup’ (Gibbs 1863b:11), thus Ross’s form is a printing error. - < ecskaun > [sic] ‘wood’, cf. the following item,
is LC /í-škan/ ‘cedar plank’ (same root as in #177, Boas 1910:601; CWDP 2012’s cite of this omits ‘plank’, under uskan), < tísh-kan > ‘plank; board’ (Gibbs 1863b:10, 16), thus Ross’s form may be a typo for *< eeskaun >. - < ecskaun > ‘chest’, cf. the preceding item.
For ‘plank’, contrast Kathlamet /ɬ-t̓u’-t-lačkan/ ‘the plank at the side of the fire’ (using the roots for ‘house’(?) and ‘oak’, the “L” in the latter suggesting a relation to the root in #177-#179; Boas “Kathlamet Texts” 1901:100.
The Grand Ronde 2012 dictionary of Chinook Jargon, under latsikʰan-stik, usefully glosses this Kathlamet noun (without explanation) as ‘hearth-side sitting-plank (a feature of traditional Chinookan houses)’). Compare Clackamas /wí-škan/ ‘a plank’ (Jacobs 1958-1959(I):248), Kiksht /i-šgán/ ‘cedar board’ (Boas 1910:640).
Bonus fact:
Probably due to his less than fluent grasp of Chinuk Wawa, Franz Boas seems to have made a mistake in his English translation of Q’lti’s Kathlamet text that includes the above word, /ɬ-t̓u’-t-lačkan/.
It’s with this Kathlamet pair of sentences:
Iɬxə́pšut ɬqaɬxíla. Ɬáx̣ stáxust gigʷalá ɬt̓útəlačkan.
Boas’s translation of those is “The Crab hid, but her face was visible behind the plank which stood near the fire.”
The problem there is, assuming the ɬt̓útəlačkan is indeed for sitting on, it’s probably not standing up vertically. (Actually I suspect this noun is plural, ‘planks’, but we can leave that aside.)
Plus, storyteller Q’lti clearly says gigʷalá ‘below’ that plank (related to Chinook Jargon’s kikwəli ‘below’), which reinforces the idea that it’s for sitting on.
Also, crabs are famously flat in their body shape. They wedge into narrow openings. They don’t so much hide behind things.
I think Boas misunderstood when Q’lti explained the Kathlamet sentences in Chinook Jargon. (Which we know Q’lti did.)
I think the crucial element is that Q’lti probably described the ɬt̓útəlačkan something like this (#BackTranslation) — ukuk laplash miɬayt wik-saya kʰapa paya, “that board that was/sat near the fire”.
This is a howler of a mistake by Boas.
If Q’lti had meant to say that the board was “standing” by the fire, he would’ve used a different specialized Kathlamet noun such as t-q̓əkʷašə́-max ‘vertical wall planks’, and he would’ve said in Jargon ukuk laplash mitxwit wik-saya kʰapa paya, “that board that stood near the fire”.
As a self-described linguistic archaeologist, I strongly advocate for back-translation into Chinuk Wawa whenever we lack documentation of speech in CW that we know occurred.
Today you’ve seen an example of the value of doing this.
𛰅𛱁𛰃𛱂 𛰙𛱁𛱆𛰅𛱁 𛰃𛱄𛰙𛰃𛱄𛰙? qʰáta mayka tə́mtəm?
kata maika tumtum? Qu’en penses-tu?
What do you think?
And can you say it in Chinuk Wawa?
Hey! Teach Yourself northern-dialect Chinook Jargon!
And join our free Zoom sessions…!
Contact me for the Zoom link.
