Snass Session, May 13, 2023:
“Chinook Book of Devotions” selections
David Douglas ROBERTSON PhD
Thanks to Kevin Pittle for the idea.
Pages 19-20:
<Epistle Rom 1>1
Iakwa Sin Pol wawa kopa msaika, pus
‘Here Saint Paul says to you folks, so that’
msaika komtaks, Sh[isyu]K[ri] nsaika taii iaka mamuk
‘you’ll know, Jesus Christ our chief’
nim2 kanawi msaika pus msaika klatwa kopa
‘names all of you so that you’ll go to’
iaka, pus iaka mamuk klahawiam msaika,
‘him, so he can take pity on you folks,’
pus iaka mash msaika masachi,3 pus
‘so he can get rid of your badness, so’
msaika chako komtaks iaka wawa pi iaka oihat,
‘you can learn his words and his way,’
pi klatwa kopa sahali ilihi,
‘and go to heaven,’
kwanisim yutl, pi pus alki
‘always be glad, and to some day’
mituit4 kopa mimlus.
‘stand up from the dead.’
Pages 48-49:
<Epistle. Rom. 12.>
Sin Pol wawa kopa nsaika pus
‘Saint Paul says to us that’
nsaika mamuk haha nsaika itluil kopa
‘we should make sacred our bodies for’
S[ahali]T[aii]; pus iaka illi kopa ST,
1 The first sentence in this reading is extremely long, by Chinuk Wawa standards. So are others that follow. This
contributes some difficulty to reading it. What might have been more characteristic for CW, and helpful for
intelligibility, would be to separate it into several shorter sentences. After the introductory part, these sentences might
start with Pi (wiht) iaka wawa pus…, ‘And (also) he says to (do such-and-such).’
2 Mamuk nim is normally ‘to name’ somebody, in the sense ‘to call them by a certain name’. Here the writer’s French
“accent” shows, in using ‘to name’ in a European literary sense of ‘to designate a person to do something; to call upon
someone to do something’.
3 Masachi ‘bad; mean’ can also be a noun, ‘bad things’. By extension it can also be ‘badness’.
4 Mituit kopa mimlus sounds odd in Chinuk Wawa. It’s literally to ‘be standing among dead people’. (Not ‘stand up
from/among the dead people.’) The intended sense is of course the Christian one of coming back to life, ‘to rise from
the dead (i.e. from death)’. A less perplexing translation might have been gitop kopa mimlus ilihi ‘get up from the
graveyard’, or kopit mimlus ‘stop being dead’. The word for ‘alive’, illi, in the Kamloops Wawa literature – seen a few
lines later — doesn’t seem to have been actually well known or much used by the average speaker, so it wouldn’t have
been very helpful to say *wiht illi*, ‘again be alive’.
‘God; so they will be alive for God,’
pus iaka tlus pi ST tlus tomtom
‘so they will be good and God will have good thoughts’
kopa iaka.
‘for them.’
Pi iaka wawa pus wik nsaika kakwa
‘And he says that we should not be like’
kaltash tilikom kopa ukuk ilihi;5 pus
‘the no-good people on this earth; that’
kwanisim nsaika tlus nanich ST iaka
‘we should always pay attention to God’s’
wawa, pi wik nsaika tomtom kopa hloima
‘word, and that we should not have thoughts for other’
oihat, kopit kopa ukuk oihat
‘roads, only for this road’
ST patlach kopa nsaika pus nsaika
‘that God gives to us and we should’
kwanisim tlus kakwa ShK nsaika taii.
‘always be good like Jesus Christ our chief.’
Page 51:
<Epistle. Rom. 12.>
Sin Pol wawa kopa nsaika pus wik
‘Saint Paul says to us to not’
nsaika sahali tomtom kopa ikta ST mamuk
‘be conceited about anything God takes’
klahawiam kopa nsaika;6 pus drit nsaika
‘pity on us (about); for us to really’
tiki nsaika tilikom; pus nsaika kwash kopa
‘love our people; for us to be afraid of’
masachi pi skukum tomtom kopa tlus; pus
‘evil things and stout-hearted about good ones; for’
nsaika tlus nanich nsaika tilikom, mamuk
‘us to take care of our people, (and) to’
aias klaska; wiht pus nsaika tlus
‘respect them; also for us to pay’
nanich ST iaka wawa; pus nsaika kikuli
‘attention to God’s words; for us to be’
tomtom pus nsaika tlap klahawiam;7 pus wik
5 Kopa ukuk ilihi, literally ‘on this earth’, is the usual way to express ‘in (this) life’.
6 …sahali tomtom kopa ikta ST mamuk klahawiam kopa nsaika is more literally ‘…arrogant about what/anything God
takes pity on us’. This is somewhat hard to make sense of, so I’ve charitably translated it as ‘…anything God takes pity
on us about.’ However, I suspect the writer meant to say …kopa ukuk ST mamuk klahawiam kopa nsaika, ‘…because
of/due to God’s taking pity on us’.
7 Tlap klahawiam = ‘wind up being pitiful; experiencing suffering’. Tlap + a predicate is ‘to wind up doing’ that thing’,
‘to manage to do’ it, ‘to be doing it unintentionally’. Contrast with the more intentional causative, patlach klahawiam,
below.
‘humble when we suffer misfortune; for’
nsaika lisi8 kopa styuil; pus nsaika mamuk
‘us to not be lazy about praying; for us to have’
klahawiam kopa nsaika tilikom, pi kopa klaksta
‘pity on our people, and on anyone’
kuli kopa oihat.
‘who (also) travels on the (same) way.’
Pus klaksta patlach klahawiam9 kopa msaika,
‘If anyone gives mistreatment to you folks,’
wik msaika saliks10 klaska, tlus msaika styuil
‘don’t be angry at them, you should pray’
pus11 klaska. Klaksta yutl tomtom, tlus
‘when they [sic]. Whoever is glad-hearted, you’
msaika yutl tomtom kanamokst,12 klaksta krai,
‘folks should be glad together with (them), whoever cries,’
tlus msaika krai kanamokst. Tlus msaika
‘you should cry together with (them). You should’
kanawi iht tomtom kanamokst, kikuli
‘all be of one heart together, humble-’
tomtom kanamokst, wik iskom13 sahali tomtom.
‘hearted together, not taking on an arrogant heart.’
Page 55:
<Epistle. Rom. 12.>
Sin Pol wawa kopa msaika:Tlus
‘Saint Paul says to you folks: Take good’
nanich kanawi ikta msaika mamuk; ilo oihoi
‘care of everything you do; don’t swap’
masachi kopa masachi; ilo patlach sik
‘meanness for meanness; don’t cause bad’
tomtom14 kopa klaksta; pus klaksta saliks
‘feelings to anyone; if someone is hostile to’
msaika, wik msaika saliks iaka; ST
‘you, don’t be hostile to them; God’
wawa:Naika piii15 ukuk kanawi. Pus
8 Lisi is one of the worst insults in Chinuk Wawa. This is why we almost always find it couched in the negative as a
warning to wik lisi ‘not be lazy’. For that latter idea, a synonym is skukum mamuk ‘work hard’.
9 Patlach klahawiam = ‘to cause misery, to inflict suffering’.
10 Saliks is very frequently a transitive verb, so we have to translate it into English as ‘to be mad at’ someone, or even ‘to
fight’ someone.
11 I suspect this styuil pus klaska, which pretty clearly was meant as ‘pray for them’, is “French-accented”. The writer
may have been thinking of French pour, meaning ‘for’. There’s also the possibility, as we sometimes see in religious
texts, of some influence from southern dialect pus, which can mean ‘for’ a noun. (Northern dialect says kopa instead.) I
find the latter idea less probable, as it’s extremely rare to find instances of pus that might be analyzed this way.
12 Notice that kanamokst when used with a verb carries a sense of action experienced or done together.
13 As always, recall that iskom means to intentionally choose something. This makes it the opposite of tlap, seen above.
14 Patlach sik tomtom (cause sadness) is more or less a synonym of patlach klahawiam, seen above.
15 Piii typically means, not just ‘pay’, but ‘pay for’, or here even ‘pay back; repay’.
‘says: “I will pay (back) all of these things.” If’
iht man saliks msaika, pi iaka chako
some person is unfriendly to you, and they get’
olo, patlach makmak kopa iaka: wik mash16 [SIC]
‘hungry, give food to them: don’t send [SIC]’
masachi tolo msaika, tlus msaika
‘bad things to beat you (at your own game), you should’
tolo masachi kopa tlus.
‘beat bad things with good ones.’
16 Mash can mean to ‘leave’ a place or person…if you say who or what you’re leaving. That’s not said here. What’s meant
by the writer is to not ‘let evil beat you’. What’s happening here, yet again, is the writer’s French “accent”. In French,
laisser means both ‘leave’ and ‘let’, and the writer Paul Durieu must have been mentally defining Chinuk Wawa mash
as both of those ideas. It’s not so easy to express ‘let’ in CW. The closest we get, for some northern-dialect speakers, is
patlach pus (‘give so that’) someone does something. Even if mash were accepted as meaning ‘let’, we’d still expect
the hypothetical marker pus to follow it, which would help show that you’re not literally saying ‘don’t leave evil’ – a
strange expression in a Christian teaching