Canadian English
LING 202, Fall 2007
Dr. Tony Pi
Week 8 - Dialects: The West
Ky-OAT-ee or KY-oat?
Controversy in Toronto about
the proper pronunciation of
the word ‘coyote’
• Torontonians: Ky-OAT-ee
• Westerners: KY-oat or KYoot (Northern Alberta) claims this is the
‘Canadian’ pronunciation
BUT
– Origins actually from
Nahuatl (Aztec) ‘coyotl’ >
co-yo-te (Spanish)
– borrowed into
southwestern US English in
early 1800s
• both pronunciations
American
Bungi/Bungee
1779—letter from Sturgeon River Fort: “This goes to inform you of Five Indians
that Arrived Here Last Night, Three Natives of the Land and two Bungees or
Sauteux [= Saulteaux] Belonging to Carriboes Head.” (quoted by Stobie
1967-68, p. 66)
Scots and Cree
• Speakers are descendants of mixture of Cree, Orkney, Scottish, and
Salteaux/French
Hudson’s Bay
• origins in forts on Hudson’s Bay around 1730s-40s
– Hudson’s Bay Company originally hired mainly Highlanders or Western
Isles who spoke Gaelic rather than Scottish English
– Orkneymen (Scottish English) employed after 1740s also contributed to
Scottish sounds around the bay
• Cree Indians acquired Scots-English as a result
– children of mixed blood became common
– the Company ordered women and children to be addressed only
in English
Where Bungi Spoken
•
•
•
Languages heard
– English, French, Gaelic,
Chippewa, Cree spoken by
large sections of the trading
post communities
Emergence of Bungi
– English dialect emerging from
union of Scots and Indians, for
whom English was a second
language
– inter-marriage resulted in
chidren who learned the
dialect
Where Bungi heard
– Along old trade routes and
from Lower Fort Garry to
mouth of the Red River
Red River
Settlement
Victor P. Lytwyn,
from Blain thesis,
p. xiii
Phonology of Bungi
– rhythm (lilting cadence)
• syllable stress (equal in canoe or bannock)
• marked pause between syllables (as in sum-mer, win-ter)
that is characteristic of Cree
– consonants and vowels
• southern Bungi (Plains Cree influence)
– affricates common in Swampy Cree lost
» shawl > sawl, picture > pitser, judge > dzudz
– no distinction between p/b, t/d, k/g (same in Cree and Gaelic)
» dog > dock
– vowel in lake and plate closer to e in pepper
– vowel in man sounds more like mon
– boat has two syllables
– willows along the river > wullows along the ruvver
Syntax of Bungi
• Freer use of demonstratives
– ‘that beer shouldn’t come first; that education
should come first’
• pronoun ‘he’ (Cree influence)
– used for corporate entities
• “the government, he”; “the Hudson Bay, he”
– used for women
• “my daughter, he”; “my wife, he”
– unlike English (masculine, feminine, neuter),
Cree only has (living, unliving) distinction
Vocabulary of Bungi
• Mostly disappeared
– Scots dialect expressions
• “to think long”: to yearn for
• “whatever”: common interjection
• “slock”: put out a light or fire
– Cree influence
• “new chee!”: Cree greeting ‘wachiyi!’ mistaken for ‘what
cheer!’ - greeting New Year
• “keeyam”: never mind
• “chimmunk”: hollow splash when a stone falls perpendicularly
in the water from a height
• “apeechequanee”: head over heels
Indian Influence on BC English
• Native Indian influence on BC English
– fish
• sockeye < Salish suk-tegh ‘red fish’
• chinook / quinnat = king salmon (Alaska)
– spring salmon (BC term)
• chum = dog salmon or keta
• coho < Interior Salish (?) = fall fish / silver salmon (US)
• kokanee < Interior Salish
– Indian life
• grease trails (for transporting valuable oil of the candlefish
between the coast and the Interior Indians
Chinook Jargon
• language once
spoken along the
Pacific coast from
Alaska to the mouth
of the Columbia River
• auxiliary trade
language
– not a first language
Shrouded Origins
– some think Chinook Jargon existed before white
traders as a trade language between Indian tribes,
while others think the Jargon was spread by white
traders
– Sources of Chinook Jargon
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Chinook language as base
words from Nootka (west coast Vancouver Island)
Salish, Kwakiutl
English and French
Chinese
Russian
Polynesian language of Hawaii
Basics of Chinook Jargon
• restricted use
– extremely simple grammar
• almost no inflections
• number to indicate plural, or repetition of a word
• no tenses
– time inferred from context or by adverbs like alta ‘now’ or alki
‘soon’
• words can function as any part of speech
• meaning can change depending on word order
– limited vocabulary
• Chinook nation provided half of ~500 words in the Jargon
– basic terms and structure words (numerals, pronouns,
interrogatives
– catch-all preposition: ‘kopa’ - to, for, by, from, etc.
Chinook Jargon Vocabulary
•
•
•
•
skookum ‘big, strong’
chuck ‘water’
saltchuck ‘ocean’
klahowya ‘hello’ or
‘goodbye’
• tyee ‘chief’ or ‘huge
salmon’
• tillicum ‘people’ or
‘person’, extended to
‘friend’
• kin chotsch-men ‘King
George Men’ =
Hudson’s Bay
Company traders
• Boston-men
‘Americans’
• passioks ‘French
traders/blanket men’
• potlatch ‘give’
Chinook Vocabulary II
• English/French roots
– capo ‘coat’
– Mah-sie ‘thanks
(merci)’, ‘pray/prayer’
– la puss ‘cat’
– book
– boat
– cole ‘cold’
– mama
– cosho ‘pig (couchon)’
• Onomatopoeia
– tik-tik ‘watch/telegraph’
– poo ‘shoot’
– tumtum ‘heart’,
‘emotion’, ‘love’
– chik-chick ‘wagon,
wheel’
Adapting Jargon Sounds
• Indians
– f, r difficult
• f>p
• r>l
• or omitted
– fish > pish
– coffee > caupy
– courir (run) > couley
– v>w
– -dge > -tsh
– sauvage > Siwash
– n, -ing, d often omitted
– handkerchief > hak-atshum
• Europeans
– tl (velar clucking)
• tlicum > tillicum
• klkwu-shala > salal
(evergreen shrub)
Creativity with Jargon
• siwash cocho ‘Indian
pig = seal’
• hyas mowitch ‘big
deer = moose’
• hyas Sunday =
‘holiday’
• skookumchuck
‘strong water = rapids’
• colechuck ‘cold water
= ice’
• cultus coulee ‘useless
run = stroll with no set
destination’
• go klatawa ‘to go visit
a special place’
• cultus potlatch ‘a little
gift of no value, and
nothing expected in
return’
Jargon Metaphors
• opitsah ‘knife’
• opitsah sikh ‘knife friend
= fork’
• hyack ‘hurry = volunteer
firefighter’
• skookum tumtum ‘strong
heart = courage’
• Saghalie Tyee ‘chief
above = God’; Sockalee
– yaka book ‘his book =
Bible’
• Causative verbs
– mamook ‘to fish/do/make’
• mamook tumtum ‘make up
one’s mind, decide, plan’
• sick tumtum ‘to be sorry,
feel sad’
• cultus mamook ‘to do
wrong, do something
badly’
• mamook kumtux ‘make
understand = to teach’
• Gesture and intonation
– siah ‘far’; sia-a-a-ah ‘far, far
away’
Borrowings by Other Languages
• Meanings change
– hyas muckamuck ‘big
food’ or ‘plenty to eat’
• England > high
muckamuck ‘derogatory
term for leaders of
society’
– Chinook
• southwest wind in
Oregon, Washington,
BC, Alberta > warming
and drying wind
– Siwash ‘Indian’
• verb meaning sleep
without shelter
• ‘to siwash’ > to be
interdicted (from buying
alcoholic drink)
• Cowichan sweaters
– skookum
• everything is skookum
‘satisfactory’
• skookum house ‘jail’
Changes to Chinook Terms
• klootchman ‘woman’
– > klootch ‘any Indian
woman living
common-law with a
white man’
– then klootchman
became the man living
this way
• English wordformaton rules
– saltchuck ‘sea’
• > saltchucker ‘someone
who fishes in the sea
for sport’
• > chucker
Chinook Jargon in Place Names
• Mamaloos Island
‘dead/to die’
• Canim Lake ‘canoe’
• Skookumchuck
• Cultus Lake
‘worthless, bad’
• Siwash Rock
• Chickamin Mountain
‘metal/money’
• Tyee Lake
• Mowitch ‘deer’
• Mesachie ‘evil’