HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2002-05-29, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 2002. PAGE 5
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Canada: garden of babble-on
One thing we•all know for sure about
Canada — it's a bilingual nation, right?
Two languages — French and English —
spoken here.
Open your ears, folks. Canada's not a
bilingual nation - it's a polyglot, Tower of
Babel nation.
Take a stroll through Vegreville, Alberta and
what are you likely to hear? Ukrainian.
Order a coffee in the Hoito restaurant in
Thunder Bay and what is the waitress
speaking? Finnish.
Stroll down the main street of Banff and
chances are 50-50 the conversation you hear
will be in Japanese.
You can get by speaking Italian in Toronto,
Mandarin in Vancouver, Icelandic in Gimli and
Gaelic in Cape Breton.
Then there's slang and dialects. Joual in.
Quebec,. Michif among many Metis on the
prairies.
And that's not even getting to the languages
that were here before the big boats with the
white sails came.
Did you know there are over 50 aboriginal
languages still spoken in Canada? There's
Anishinabe, Inuktitut, Kwakwala, Maliseet,
Mi'kmaq, Mohawk, Siksika and Slavey to
name a handful. The language names might
not be familiar, but I guarantee you already
know some words in them.
Saskatchewan, Ontario, Manitoba. Nanaimo,
Winnipeg, Ottawa. See? You speak like a pro.
Canada is so rich in languages we've all but
lost one without even noticing. A hundred
years ago it was the lingua franca of all-
W hen I am away from home for any
length of time my family usually
sees to it that I am sent copies of
Canadian newspapers. •
It is nice to come back to my temporary
abode, prop my feet up and read what has been
going on in Canada during my absence. It is
not that I miss our news- so much; it is simply
because the foreign newspapers carry little or
no news of Canadian content and, when they
do, it is sometimes rather secondary in
importance.
One thing that can be said about foreign
newspapers; they certainly reflect the shortage
of trees in the country in qi,lestion. There is no
doubt whatsoever that they are considerably
smaller than large Canadian dailies, being
more along the lines of The Citizen,both in the
size of the page and the number of pages.
This means that there are a number of things
that are not be found; foremost among these is
any news of a specific village or hamlet.
In the weekly newspapers that take my
column, I can be sure to find news of any of the
surrounding communities of any size. There is
a local correspondent whose job it is to provide
the newspaper with news of any activity,
movement, statement, visit etc. of any
importance. You can be sure that, on any given
week, the readers are well informed of the
comings and goings of the surrounding
district.
You can forget that in Europe! In their
version of the news they simply do not have
room for it in such a small newspaper and the
lack of such news does not seem to bother ,
anybody to any degree. Anybody I ever talked
to about it sort of shrugged his or her shoulders
and stated that there were simply too many
such. communities to be able to give them
adequate coverage.
They are quite right.
The population density in Europe is
considerably higher than it is here; villages are
crammed more closely together and trying to
encounters between west coast natives and
European traders and explorers.
It is known as the Chinook jargon.
Not a language really — a few hundred words •
at most. A little French, a little English and a
lot of native words all stirred together.
We still have a few nuggets of Chinook
jargon in English: the word 'hootch' for
homemade liquor comes from 'hootchanoo'
and `snoose' for chewing tobacco is a
corruption of `chinoos', the native word for
tobacco.
We can thank Chinook jargon for the word
`potlatch' meaning a feast; and for the word
muckamuck.
We speak . of 'high muckamucks' when
referring to moguls and tycoons like Conrad
Black and Donald Trump. In Chinookjargon,
`hyas muckamuck' was a person important
enough to eat at the main table with the chief.
Someone once remarked on the unusually
large number of pet dogs on the west coast
named `Chako'. Actually, it's not a name. It's
Chinook jargon for 'come here'.
And people of all races who live on the west
coast still use the term `skookum' widely. It's a
word with a lot of meanings. It can be 'good',
give them all equal billing, or even according
to their relative size, would take up far too
much space.
Unless the residents of such places commit a
heinous crime or start a revolution, they are
pretty well ignored.
There is no such thing as comics but there is
generally a cartoonist who puts his or her
talent to work generally on the political scene.
Many of the newspapers do have some
political bent which can soon be gleaned by
reading a few of the editorials and the
cartoonist tags along with his pictorial
reflection of the contents of the editorials.
Humour may or may not be contained in the
pictures.
Certainly European readers tend to be as
sports-minded as Canadian ones so you can
count on a generous serving of reports of
recent games, the state of the national team and
the comings and goings of players
As in Canada there are even newspapers
dedicated wholly to sports.
I recall that, when I was playing hockey in
Switzerland, I had the misfortune to get in an
accident (more precisely I had a building fall
on me). In no time at all the country's sport
Final Thought
Nearly all our originality comes from the
stamp that time impresses upon our
sensibility.
— Charles Baudelaire
'powerful', 'delicious' or 'tough' or just 'big'.
There's a set of 'powerful rapids in British
Columbia called Skookumchuck.
That's pure Chinook: skookum means
'strong' and chuck means 'ocean'.
But nobody on the Pacific coast seems to
have much use for a trading language
anymore. Aside from a few linguistic fossils,
Chinook jargon is as dead as Etruscan or
Phoenician.
A pity. We .lose some words that would be
useful in any language. Stich as `klahhanie',
which means 'outside'. It's tricky, though. If
you are `klahhanie', you are in the great
outdoors. But if you `go klahhanie', you're on
your way to the biffy.
Then there's `tillicum' (or 'filikum'). This
refers to kin, or people.
Tillicum can be your friends, your family or
your social group. It was commonly used to
refer to your ally or buddy.
My favourite morsel of lost Chinook jargon?
Klahowya. It was the standard thing to say
when meeting someone or leaving them - like
`aloha' in Hawaiian.
It sounds like a corruption of the English
expression 'How are you', but linguists believe
it derives from a word in the Chinook language
`klahauia'. _
Whatever. To my ear it sounds cheery and
salubrious and disarmingly friendly.
I can visualize an early explorer — a Fraser or
a Vancouver — nervously approaching a group
of Salish people and waiting for the magic
word.
So. Klahowya, tillicum.
n style
magazine had a reporter and a photographer
around to the hospital to interview me and to
take a picture of me.
It looked horrible which is exactly how I felt.
With the smaller size and the capsulated
news, you can at least get through a newspaper
more quickly than you can in Canada. It is also
easier to buy one there since newsstands are far
more prevalent through Europe than they are
here.
Along with your favourite newspaper you
can buy a magazine or two since there is
wide variety of them on sale.
Finally the smaller size lends itself to a
practice which I find attractive. Many
restaurants have a rack on which are hung
wooden rods, to each of which is attached the
latest edition of the most popular newspapers.
There are even a few magazines hung similarly
to add variety.
Having had to eat so often in European
restaurants, I admit to enjoying the meal more
by catching up on the news while waiting for
my meal or even afterwards.
I do, however, try' to avoid reading any
articles that are likely to spoil my appetite.
Letters Policy
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editor.
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the purpose of verification only. Letters
that are not signed will not be printed.
Submissions may be edited for length,
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printed a: space allows. Please keep
your letters brief and concise.
ek Bonnie
Gropp
The short of it
Bad moon rising
Odd — that's the only way to describe
it. I just felt odd. Actually maybe that's
not quite accurate, because odd
indicates something peculiar or unusual, and
while that would certainly describe the mood,
it was not one with which I am unfamiliar.
What was happening to me has happened
many, many times before.
It all began about mid-morning last
Thursday, with -a sense of unease. By lunch, I
was tense, withdrawn, quick to anger and felt
like this pretense of acting normal was taking
all my energy. By Friday I was wound up
tighter than a cheap watch, ready to spin at the
slightest provocation.
This sudden weirdness was not extreme, and
to . any sensitive, aware ihdividual such as
myself, a noticeable condition in most other
people around me. It was like everyone was
just a little off, every circumstance just a little
peculiar.
And had the sky been clear we would have
seen it coming in the lunar wake of the waxing
gibbous. The full moon, which arrived last
weekend, is a mystic thing of speculation,
romance and controversy.
My first hint that things may be a little off
centre during a full moon, was when a cop I
knew complained about working during that
part of the lunar cycle. It was, he said, always
a busy time. More murder, more suicide, more
stupidity, more juit plain whackos. Even
regular folk acted just a tad strange.
Curious, I started to pay attention. And what
I noticed would seem to back up what my cop
friend said. While it's nothing so extreme, I
have seen, I believe, a certain tendency for
irregular behaviour.
The influences of the full moon and
behaviour even have a name. It has been called
The Lunar Effect. And the word lunacy, of
course, comes from the Latin word for moon.
Yet, there are numerous sources decrying
any truth to such notions. Tle world-wide web
has many sites dedicated to discounting moon
mythology. One which I discovered,
NeurOscience for Kids, provides scientific data
to disprove these beliefs.
There were few exceptions. Of the 11,613
cases studied of aggravated assault in a five-
year period, more occurred around the full
moon. Of 34,318 crimes in a one-year period
again more happened during a full moon.
Under the category of violence, aggression
and crime that was just two out of seven.
I could go on, but suffice it to say that those
who maintain a belief that the full moon does
affect people adversely, apparently are baying
right at that moon. According to the
information this can be explained in part by
selective memory. Because you believe, you
may remember strange incidents 'which occur
during a full moon, but forget those that don't.
Could be. But can all those doctors, nurses
and cops be wrong? And why is it that it's only
after I'm noticing things are bizarre that I
check the calendar and am not surprised to see
what's coming?
But the data seems sound. It would appear
that my feelings about the full moon may be
wrong. And yet... I'm not a gullible person.
I'm not a foolish person. I don't dabble in the"
occult. I don't believe in hocus pocus. I am
actually a skeptic of the highest order. So I'm
thinking it might be fun to do some data
collecting of my own because I stills think
there's something odd about that moon.
What do you think?
Reading the news fore?,