Lesson 3a: Kin and Corpus

The Washo language is allergic to a vowel at the beginning of stem. This is a common phenomenon in the languages of the world - even in languages where the glottal stop is a phoneme (a sound as distinct as p or m) and does make a difference between words (e.g., Hawaiian au and a'u do not mean the same thing), the glottal stop is often added before the vowel.

The majority of Washo stems do not begin with a vowel, but a consonant. These stems still require prefixes, but these are different prefixes. Most of these prefixes are related to the ones you have already learned. 
The first person prefix is di-, which produces diháŋa "my mouth" and di'á:ťu "my elder brother, gege".
Now, di- may not seem related to le-, but an alternation between d, l/r, and n is quite common. In Oscan, a sister language to Latin, the confusion even caused the Greek letters for d and r to change places in the Oscan alphabet. Another example - the existence of an spoken l in the oldest forms of Egyptian comes from the variation in the spelling of the word "dwarf", which sometimes has an r, sometimes an n, and sometimes an aleph. Since Washo does not have an r, all the qualities of an r are subsumed in l.

The second person prefix is 'um- (note the presence of the glottal stop) or 'ım-. This is an example of descriptive grammar. A standard European grammar selects one form (usually that of the capitol) and condemns all others as WRONG. Descriptive grammars, such as those linguistics majors turn into theses, try to describe all relatively common ways of speaking. Jacobsen, however, did intend to write an teaching grammar (some are reference grammars), and therefore had to chose one example form. So Jacobsen uses 'um-, apparently because it was more common. Even in a small speech community such as Washo, there are variations. The difference between 'um- and  'ım- may have something to do with vowel harmony (see the paragraph below), but Jacobsen provides no examples, so I cannot say anything further. Other words which show the second person prefix are  'umtó'o,  "your throat", and 'um'í:sa , "your older sister, jiejie".

The third person prefix, da-/de-, adds another trick in the Washo grammatical repertoire. The choice of da- or de- depends on the vowel in the following syllable; if the vowel in the following syllable is a or o, the prefix is da-, but if the vowel in the following syllable is any other vowel, the prefix is de-. This is called vowel harmony, and it is worth noting that the direction of travel is the reverse of vowel coloring. The prefix le- , which triggers vowel coloring, affects the vowel after it, whereas the prefix da-/de- changes according to the following vowel. There are slightly different vowel harmony systems for southern and norther varieties of Washo, but once again I have not researched the details thoroughly - yet. In any case, Jacobsen's examples are fairly simple. The examples follow:
dap'á:pıš "his lungs" vs. dip'á:pıš "my lungs"
da'á:ťu "his older brother" vs. di'á:ťu "my older brother"
dep'ísew "his ear(s)" vs. dip'ísew "my ear(s)"
debéyu "his younger brother, ta didi" vs. dibéyu "my younger brother, wo didi"

Only two vocabulary words in this lesson are not related to body or family members, the two inalienable categories of the Washo tongue: wá:laš "bread"  and k'ómol "ball". The bread in question is made from pine nuts, a staple of the Washo diet, rather than wheat or barley. One of the causes of toothlessness prior to the introduction of corn and wheat was the constant rubbing of stone particles and shells against the teeth. Think about that when you bite into a pistachio!

The inclusion of a word such as "ball" is a reminder that play is an essential component of human life, not just the reserve of wealthier societies. Washo society was very survival oriented, even possessing an ogre, the hanawiyiy (check spelling), which ate lazy children, but the existence of words such as p'áyti' 'play' and k'ómol "ball" indicate that all work and no play makes Jackrabbit (pelew) a dull boy.

Lesson 1c: Blankets and Bones

It's Labor Day, but there's one final twist on the prefixes for the summer. The prefixes m-, ť-, and d- are as well behaved as one could wish, but the prefix l-, in a fitting display of egotism, differs. The true form of the first person prefix is not l-, but le-. This phenomenon is known as vowel coloring. Vowel coloring changes an adjacent vowel, but sometimes does not otherwise betray its presence. In this case, the vowel coloring of le- is weak, and easily overwhelmed by all vowels except for i. Unlike the promise in the Gospel, the le- prefix does change an iota of the (linguistic) law; an i preceded by the le- prefix becomes e. Thus íyeš becomes léyeš "my daughter-in-law", ipi? becomes lépi? "my blanket", í:bu changes to lé:bu, and í:bi? is transformed into lé:bi?. If you can keep those last three straight without practice, you're doing better than I did.

Have a good weekend!

Lesson 1a: Bed and Board, M'Lord

(A brief note before we start: if these posts seem short, they are baby steps to walking in the Washo language.)

Washo words are not allowed to begin with a vowel (and in Washo, the glottal stop qualifies as a consonant). It's just one of the quirks of the language - and you will learn of many quirks if you follow the siren song of The Tahoe Tongue. Many languages, however, have roots whose structures are at odds with the final structure of the word or phrase. If a Washo stem such as áŋal "house" or émlu "food" begins with a vowel, yet the final product may not, what's a speaker to do? The answer involves prefixation. Prefixation occurs when one grammatical element attaches itself to the front of the word root; an Latin example of this is the self-illustrating word "prefix", in which "pre" is a prefix.

So let us suppose that a Washo speaker sees a house (more likely a hogan, in the days before the coming of the White Man) and knows nothing else about it. The root for "house" or "to build is áŋal, but cannot be used by itself. The speaker would have to say dáŋal, using the prefix d-.

What if the speaker knows whose house it is? In the Washo Province of the Land of Grammar, there are only three persons: first (me), second (you), and third (that guy we're talking about). If the speaker wished to indicate his own house, he would say láŋal, "my house" or "our house". If the house in question were not his, but that of his companion, he would say máŋal, "your house". If the house belonged to subject of the conversation, the speaker would say ťáŋal, "his house", in which ť is a glottalized t. (I will defer to the excellent the pronunciation guide, with audio, at The Washo Project - http://washo.uchicago.edu/ ), This process is similar to the "m'lord" and "m'lady" pronunciation of "my lord" and "my lady", if one could also say "y'lord" and "s'lady".

Note that Washo does not care much about gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) or grammatical number (singular, dual, plural); thus ťáŋal can mean "his house", "her house", "their house", "his houses", "her houses", "their houses". There is a way of making things plural, but that lesson is far down the line, beyond Jacobsen.