1. Why do Indian words have to be spelled that way?
A phonetic writing system has two goals: (1) to faithfully
represent how the language sounds. (That’s an entirely
different goal than written English, which preserves a four-hundred
year tradition of the evolution of the language); and (2) to
preserve the distinctiveness of the language. We don’t
want to ‘hear’ only the speech sounds familiar to
us, the ones that are ‘like’ English; we want to
develop our listening and speaking skills to become good speakers
of Coeur d’Alene. Settling for the “nearest
English equivalent” will only help obliterate everything
distinctively Coeur d’Alene, leading to the demise
of the language.
Lawrence Nicodemus (1909-2004), the world’s authority on Coeur
d’Alene, learned to translate Coeur d’Alene as
a teenager, using the International Phonetic Alphabet. In 1975
he developed a modified writing system using only characters found
on a common typewriter keyboard. He hoped that his system--- -still
a phonetic alphabet---would make it easier for tribal members to
learn the language. All of his writings and all of the materials
gathered by the tribal language program use that system for consistency.
Students of any age who learn his system can effectively sound
out the correct pronunciations for the Coeur d’Alene. back
2. Someone told my grandson not to call me yeah-yeah.
We don’t tell families how to refer to their grandparents.
We do point out that Coeur d’Alene and Spokan-Kalispel-Flathead (or
Bitterroot, or Montana-Salish) have very similar terms for ‘mother’s
mother’: chchiye’ (Kalispel) and chcheye’ (Coeur
d’Alene). A long time ago, both resulted in a common
baby-talk, ye’ye’, and later an English
pronunciation that sounds (now) more like "yeah-yeah." Both
languages have different terms for ‘father’s mother’: qene’ (KA)
and qine’ (CdA). In some families, "yeah-yeah" is
used to refer to both grandmas, and even sometimes to grandma's
sisters, or female relatives.
Families often have pet names and nicknames for members. Our goal
is only to teach what we’ve learned about the Coeur d’Alene language. back
3. Why don’t you have more samples of elders
talking on your web page?
We do our best to enlist help from those persons most knowledgeable
and most able to speak Coeur d’Alene.
As students of the language we know that in the coming years
and generations most people will learn Coeur d’Alene from
their peers. Current learners benefit from a variety of voices
of both listeners and speakers.
Besides it’s very demanding of our elder experts to recite
and use what we think we ought to know. Most of them have already
put in their time. It’s up to the folks they’ve trained
to continue the tradition of speaking Coeur d’Alene. back
4.Sometimes I see hyphens in words, sometimes not.
What do they mean?
In older materials, and especially archival records of government
officials or early contact, the hyphens most likely represent
attempts to sound out the pauses and breaths in longer words,
or to ‘count’ the syllables.
In newer materials like curricula, sometimes hyphens are used
to separate out the parts of words. For example hi-skwist is ‘my-name’,
and hn-ch’m-qin-kwe’ is ‘place-surface-head-water’,
or the Coeur d’Alene term for the ancient headquarters
and village site, now called “Coeur d’Alene, ID”.
We use this standard in teaching materials, much like you would
see explanations in dictionary entries, but generally don’t
break words, phrase, and explanations up in most of our documents.
On the map it’s hnch’mqinkwe’. back
5. My dialect is very different from what I see people
now saying in Coeur d’Alene.
Historically the aboriginal territory of the Coeur d’Alenes
was the only place in the world where the Coeur d’Alene language
was spoken.
The near neighbors the Spokane, Kalispel, and Flatheads spoke
dialects of a different, but related language. Sometimes that
language is called Kalispel (by linguists and other
scholars) or Spokan or Flathead (or Montana-Bitterroot
Salish), or even “Salish”. Salish is also
the name of the language family, which includes twenty-three
languages spoken from Montana to the coast, including Coeur
d’Alene.
When the Jesuits entered the region they used Kalispel for
their prayers and hymns believing that, like in Europe, it was
spoken over a large enough area to be understood widely.
Later, Kalispel speaking Spokanes, Flatheads, Pend
Oreilles, and Kalispels inter-married with Coeur d’Alenes.
Ninety Spokane families relocated to the Worley and Lovell Valley
areas in the 1890’s when forced out of the growing town
of Spokane, WA.
Those priests and individual Indian families brought their
language traditions with them. They spoke a different language
than Coeur d’Alene. The differences among the Coeur
d’Alene-speaking families was small and there was,
and is, little trouble in recognizing the differences.
Sometimes the seeming ‘dialect’ differences you describe
are really differences between the languages. We work to sort them
out and talk about the differences between Coeur d’Alene and Kalispel. back
No, seriously, listen to the “accents” of immigrants
who have lived in the United States a long time. Listen to the
television interviews of baseball players born in Latin America,
or NBA players from Europe, or government officials from other
countries who now speak English as a second language. Listen
to the translators who accompany visiting dignitaries when they
visit Washington, DC and are shown on American television with
the President. It takes a long time to learn a language and even
longer to be good at it.
The good news is in our circumstances, with very few speakers,
it's possible for many people to learn some things quickly. Students
of the language can be somewhat conversational after a year of
study. back
7. I often see lim lemtsh spelled “lim
lemt.sh.” What’s the significance of the period
in the middle of it?
There’s a t sound in the language, a ts sound,
an s and an sh. The combination in lim lemtsh is
a t followed by an sh, not a ts followed
by an h. Therefore, Lawrence often inserted a period between
the t and s or sh, when they were analytically
separate. back
8. How do you say it in Indian?
We often get requests for Coeur
d'Alene that require us to rethink how we want to say
it, so that the translation fits the request. For example...
ul
ta'l q'esp ch'epł ha
t'aqne' 'A long time ago
we had grain sacks'
qhem 'They
were heavy'
'aachatmaq'wn
khwa a yeryerpet 'I used to load them onto our wagon'
ch'n
twa [h]nmaq'wminn 'And go to the granary'
"What's
the Coeur d'Alene 'word' for "grain"?
you might ask. "How do you say, 'I filled the grain
sack,' or 'I took the grain to the elevator'?"
You might get more than one answer, or different
answers from the people you ask. They would likely say, "It depends on the
context." More than likely, Coeur d'Alene speakers will not tell
you about the thing, the grain, but about the activity. So much of the
language centers on the action, or verb. To talk about who, what, when, where,
how, and so forth, we often begin with the verb.
The verb p'aq'w in Coeur d'Alene means
'to spill, or pour small things (like grain, sand, or small gravel---but not
liquids).' We refer to the verb in this form as the 'root,' or 'stem.' We make
many other words and phrases by adding to it.
p'aq'w-nt-s
'he
spilled it'
hn-p'aq'w-nt-s
'he
poured it into something'
(for
example, he poured grain into a partially filled
sack)
chat-p'aq'w-nt-s
'he
poured it on top (of the pile)'
(e.g.,
he poured grain onto the back of a wagon, or a pile
on the floor)
tsan-p'aq'w-nt-s
'he
poured it underneath something'
(or
he spilled it under the wagon as he was loading it)
p'aq'u-q'w
'it
spilled out (of a hole in the sack)'
p'uq'u-'lmkhw-nt-s
'he
poured it on the ground'
p'uq'u-'lmkhw-n
'seeder
(an implement for broadcasting seeds)'
hn-p'aq'w-min-n
'granary
(literally, 'a place to pour things in')
Note
that 'grain' is not part of any of these phrases. It's
not explicitly referred to, but only implied in the discussion
of the activities. Note also that in the anecdote Lawrence
uses hnmaq'wminn for 'granary', 'a place where
things lie' (The stem is maq'w, 'plural things
lie'); apart from the anecdote, he lists a different word
for 'granary.' That is, Lawrence uses different words for
the same place, according to how he's thinking about the
activities. Nor is 'grain' part of the word for 'grain
sacks.' What's in the 'sack' is implied!
