Mi’kmaw Language Discussion with Bernie Francis and Doug Smith

The following language discussion was organized and recorded by Trudy Sable, PhD during a Native Council of Nova Scotia meeting at which Doug Smith and Bernie Francis were being honoured for their work to develop the Smith/Francis orthography. Present were: Bernie Francis, Doug Smith, Harold McGee, Ruth Whitehead, Trudy Sable, Bernadette Johnson, and Margaret Walsh. Katherine Sorbey, Helen Sylliboy and David Schmidt were partial attendees.

In text translation and transliteration: Bernie Francis

[Note: Due to the poor sound quality and disturbance in parts of the video, some segments were inaudible and not transcribed.]

HM      First question is, where did it all begin? In other words, what’s the relationship of Mi’kmaw to other Algonquian languages, and when would it, temporally, when would it have separated from some kind proto-Mi’kmaw or proto Wabanaki? 

DS       Well, I’m not sure I could give you the dates on that; that’s kind of difficult to establish. Algonquian is the name of the language family, just like Indo-European is the language family for most of the languages spoken in Europe. So, Algonquian consists of many languages, which again can be broken up into various regions such as Eastern Algonquian, Central Algonquian, and there are Algonquian languages also spoken out west such as Cree. Mi’kmaw belongs to the Eastern Algonquian branch, so it’s related to other languages which belong to that same branch, such as Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Wabanaki, Maliseet, and so forth. It’s difficult to pinpoint when Mi’kmaw would have separated, as they say in linguistics, from a larger common stock. Partly the reason it’s so difficult is there aren’t any written records, like we have when we study the Indo-European languages. But separation itself takes place, generally, when in the beginning you have a common cultural linguistic group, which for whatever reasons—perhaps overcrowding, or perhaps famine or whatever—begin to diverge within different geographical areas. It’s quite magical that when people separate, they’re no longer talking to each other, and therefore their languages don’t reinforce each other anymore, so that the languages gradually, over time, become more and more different.  Just as English is basically a Low German language, it broke off from [High] German many centuries ago, Mi’kmaw at some point, the Mi’kmaw people, must have separated themselves geographically and then developed their own language and own culture. 

BF       There is also the—if I may just add to the comments—it’s not absolutely certain now that according to the linguistic evidence, that it was Mi’kmaq that inhabited this area for 12,000 years. There’s some difficulties with certain words in Mi’kmaw language that don’t seem to fit the proto Algonquian. So, there’s some work being done on that at the moment. Words like kun’tew (rock)* and samuqwan (water) that don’t necessarily fit that nice little mold that we used to believe it used to fit.

[*Note, in a later conversation, Dr. Francis changed the word for woman, e’pit, to the word for rock, kun’tew).]

HM      I was under the impression that languages such as Maliseet and Passamaquoddy and Penobscot, are much more closely related to each other than any of those are to Mi’kmaw, and, of that Eastern group, Mi’kmaw is the most distinct. 

BF       Yeah, that is correct. 

RW      Where do you think these words are coming from? 

BF       Not absolutely sure about that at the moment except to say that it’s…When I look at this, I am fairly certain that Mi’kmaq would have been around for at least 1000 years, but there are, you know, we used to say they’d been around for 12,000, but I’m absolutely sure about that anymore. There might’ve been another group here, but I don’t know that group is and neither does anyone else. So, we have some borrowings in Mi’kmaw language from this particular language that existed in this area. I don’t know what that language is or was. 

RW      Did it have to exist in this area to be borrowed from, or could they have borrowed it from somewhere else? 

BF       They could’ve maybe borrowed it from somewhere else, but I’m not sure about that either. There’s all sorts of speculation on that at the moment. 

RW      That’s fascinating. 

BF       I know. I’ve been keeping my eye on that particular topic. 

RW      Bring us up to date when you know. 

BF       Yeah, yeah. 

DS       So, it’s also possible that they created their own words because of new cultural objects.  Now, in the case of water, no, but often times you don’t have the same reflexes in all the languages because as the cultures diverged, they created new words. 

BF       But the two particular words I chose doesn’t fall into this, mainly, ‘water’ and ‘woman’, [see Note above re: BF changing the word from ‘woman’ to ‘rock’,  kun’tew, ed] so it’s a little bit different. 

DS       Yes, generally, if languages are related, they’ll share the same basic vocabulary—body parts, numbers, things of that nature. But, when it comes to something like water, it really makes you wonder exactly how that could happen. 

RW      Can you give us a short overview of what Mi’kmaw is like as a language as opposed to, relative to other languages? 

BF       As opposed to the European stock, you mean? 

RW      As opposed to anything. 

BF       Let’s say as opposed to, let’s say English then. Over the years, since Doug and I started, we’ve sort of looked at it under a microscope. We find that it seems to cut up reality differently, as every language cuts up reality in a certain way. Mi’kmaw does it as well, and very different from English in the sense that, for one thing, it seems to cut it up less in my mind.  It seems to reflect reality in a way that the English language, I find, fails to do. That is, it just seems that it demonstrates in its verb-like way, that the world is in constant motion, constant flux.  That’s one major difference I find.  The second thing is, even the so-called nouns in Mi’kmaw, I realize now that you don’t have to dig too far to realize that these are just, what I call now, ‘recycled verbs’.  And they just sort of changed the ending on it and made it into a noun. Words like ‘ikn or ‘aqn are usually suffixes that come at the end of a word which gives it the noun-like quality. But I have no difficulty in demonstrating some nouns that these are old verbs. Other nouns are a little bit more difficult, and some aren’t. 

RW      Does that apply to animal names? 

BF       Well, there… animals’ names are… Yeah, they are because they are onomatopoeic whereby they certainly, in some way, reflect either the animal’s movement or the animal’s sound. But English does that as well, as far as the onomatopoeic (?), such as the little bird that sings out my window sometimes—chickadee-dee-dee—I’m pretty sure that’s where they get the word chickadee, and so on. Or, the English word ‘to piss’. In Mi’kmaw it’s pi’si (emphasizes the ssss sound) and you hear that as well. Or it could be other movements as well, such as with the word for turkey. Rather than sound, it deals with the movement of the turkey, whereby he moves his head (bobs head forward and back). And therefore, it gets the name Apatapekiejit (turkey)  or the thing that retracts, retracts, retracts so that’s the particular characteristic. Of course, the way that it divides the so-called nouns as to whether they are animate or inanimate, that’s also a peculiar characteristic.

DS       You mentioned the verb-like quality of Mi’kmaw and you think that reflects the Mi’kmaw world view as you were talking about, Bernadette (before session started) a world view where the world is perceived primarily as flow or as flux, movement, as opposed to say the Indo-European noun-centered languages which objectify the world. They turn the world into objects which can then be analyzed; they can be gotten a hold of, taken apart, put back together, and treated as things as opposed to movements. If I’m reading you right, what you’re saying is that in the Mi’kmaw language, there’s an inherent dynamism or movement that Mi’kmaw speakers themselves are always aware of, whereas in English, we tend to be more aware of nouns; we are a ‘thing’ oriented society as opposed to a ‘movement’ oriented society. 

BF       I tend to picture it as a…the English language seems to take a photograph of the world—

a still photograph—whereas Mi’kmaw is more like a video camera. I came across this idea a while back, and that still seems to hold. 

DS       That’s a good analogy. Heraclitus, a sixth century B.C. Greek philosopher, I think he’s the one who said you never step into the same river twice, meaning that you may still call it the Miramichi River, but it’s constantly changing—the water’s different, the banks are different, everything’s different about the river at every moment.  So, even though you may step into it two days in a row, it’s not really the same river. And, he gave a beautiful example because he believed that the things that we take to be things, as opposed to outright movements, are really the result of a tension of opposites. And, he gave the example of the lyre, a musical instrument, or the bow that you shoot with. The bow, because of the tension of the string against the wood, that’s what makes it a bow. The same with the musical instrument.  If you don’t have the strings taut against the box of the instrument, you don’t have a lyre.  So, he saw the whole world this way, as in a constant state of tension, and therefore always moving even though it appears to be still. 

BF       I think Bernadette wanted to hear about the animacy and inanimacy of objects. I may as well…I guess I’ll talk about that a little. First of all, there are some linguists who regard that aspect of Mi’kmaw as not being more than grammatical.  It’s just a grammar thing, you know.  And I think to a point, that’s probably correct.  But I’ve been paying attention to that over the years, and I’ve realized that there are certain things, which Mi’kmaw people classify as either animate or inanimate, and it comes from a long stem of having thought about things, whether they realize it or not.  Mi’kmaq sometimes don’t realize why they would immediately classify a brand new object that never existed in the Mi’kmaw language before, why they would immediately classify that as an animate object or an inanimate object.

It’s no great mystery, for instance, that in the home, a television is classified as an inanimate object whereby a refrigerator is classified as an animate object.  We seem to think, or I seem to think—I won’t put the blame on anyone else—but I seem to think that a refrigerator is an animate object because, for two reasons:  

First of all, because it is an important item in a Mi’kmaw household today; it keeps your food from spoiling, keeps drinks cold—it’s a very, very important item. That’s the first reason. The second reason for why Mi’kmaq would classify a refrigerator as an animate object is because the entire piece of metal that we refer to as a refrigerator is important, that’s what makes it a refrigerator. Supposing you kept all the metal inside, or the plastic or whatever, the racks and so on, and took away the metal, then you no longer have a refrigerator because it doesn’t refrigerate. But, the entire thing does the job of refrigerating food.  

A television—let’s move onto a television—that’s an inanimate object in Mi’kmaw. It’s because, for two reasons, I guess.  It’s an inanimate object because, first of all, it’s not absolutely necessary in the home and there are people without TVs—it’s not a big deal, they just go next door.  That’s one reason.  The other reason is that when you refer to a television, you’re referring to the box, you know, with the glass on it and so on.  You can actually take that box with the glass and everything that sets on it, you can remove that thing and throw it out, and you can still watch your TV because it’s your picture tube that you’re paying attention to now.  What about the picture tube?  Right away, the picture tube is an animate object. Whereas when you have the box on it, this box is not absolutely necessary to the running of the TV, is an inanimate object, you see.  So, that’s why you refer to the TV as an inanimate object, because of this box, but the tube itself, where you see the picture, that’s your… 

HM      Move(?) to body parts? Are there some body parts that are inanimate and other body parts that are animate? 

BF       Yeah, we can get into that in a minute. I’ll continue on. So that’s that part of it.  That is our explanation for that.  Now, let’s take for instance a school bus; let’s say a town bus rather.  A town bus in Membertou, which is surrounded by the city of Sydney, walking distance probably about a couple of kilometers into town.  It’s inanimate because a bus is not very important.  So, there’s this thing about importance.  

The word importance means something here in that if something is extremely important, I suppose, in this case anyway, that you would classify it as an animate object.  In Membertou it is not really important that there’s a bus; it’s not a big thing.  In Eskasoni, on the other hand, a bus is classified as an animate object because it’s 30 miles from another city; it’s very important to have that. But the argument breaks down. For instance, a motorcycle in Membertou is inanimate.  You would say talki’k, “How big is it?”  Whereas, in Eskasoni, you would say talkilk, “How big is he?”  This kind of thing. I don’t know why that is; I can’t give you a reason. I know it’s not absolutely important to own a motorcycle in Eskasoni; it’s just for recreation, you know. But same thing with a car.  In both cases, I think a car is important in Membertou and Eskasoni, but in both cases it’s inanimate. There’s not these hard and fast rules all the time. Now, which body parts would you like to start with Harold? (laughs) 

TS        At some point, would you address where the notion of animacy or inanimacy became defined, or who came up with that idea. What do the words mean? I have a sense of it when you talk about it, but we were talking about it the other day… 

DS       I think it goes back to the Algonquian linguists.

TS        It’s really important. 

BF       Well, there used to be different words actually used when linguists first arrived at the shores. 

HM      And that gets closer to your important and unimportant distinctions. 

BF       Yeah, that’s right. They’re not used any longer, at least I haven’t heard any linguists use them. It’s always animate or inanimate. 

HM      But I think part of the difficulty, or part of the emphasis, it’s one thing that these are noun categories, and if Mi’kmaw is predominantly a verb-oriented language, then the linguistic focus on animate and inanimate might well be a prejudice of the English speaking, French speaking scholars, rather than a generally intrinsic aspect of the Mi’kmaw language. There may be other linguistic categories in Mi’kmaw that are of more interest or more significance than animacy and inanimacy. But, it is because those terms carry such a heavy semantic meaning in English and French, that they’re emphasized in French and English linguistics because of the significance to the non-Mi’kmaw society, and the non-Mi’kmaw culture. 

RW      Somewhere along the line today, if you could talk about what features of the landscape were considered animate as opposed to inanimate. I think you told me once that rivers were inanimate, but lakes were animate. 

BF       Well, I think one of the things that came up at one point is the word mountain.  I think, again, there’s no real hard and fast rule with mountain. Some people say that it’s animate, some people refer to it as inanimate. So, there is no correct or incorrect way of addressing let’s say the mountain. You have other things, for example in Mi’kmaw, a doorway.  A doorway is, where somebody says ala ka’qnetek, meaning that it’s an inanimate object.  At first I thought a door was an inanimate object, but then I realized no, that’s not the case at all.  It was the doorway that were referring to, whereas a door is an animate object in Mi’kmaw. 

RW      Is that a door as in a door blanket for a wi’kuom?

BF       No, I’m talking about a modern-day door. Lakes, rivers, and so forth are usually inanimate. 

RW      What about directions? Wind, weather conditions like ice and snow? 

BF       Usually inanimate. 

DS       Harold maybe you could rephrase your question more specifically about (inaudible) the origins…

BF       Let me just… okay, go ahead and rephrase it. 

HM      The first aspect of the question is a concern that the fascination or concern with animacy and inanimacy is a consequence of the meaning of those words in English and other European languages, and the fact that it carries a heavy semantic load in those languages that it may not possess in Mi’kmaw. The point was that, since you had stated that Mi’kmaw is predominantly verb-focused, that it seems that linguists spend an inordinate amount of time talking about animacy and inanimacy when there may be more significant linguistic aspects of Mi’kmaw that reflect the world view of Mi’kmaw speakers far better than does animacy and inanimacy. 

DS       The terms animate and inanimate were taken up because all zoologically alive entities belong to one class as opposed to another. Basically, there are two ways to classify nouns grammatically. We’re talking about the surface structure. We’re talking about what kind of inflectional endings they take. So, it’s like we have two baskets and every noun, except for the ones that Bernie mentioned—there are some exceptions—but the exception usually proves the rule. All nouns have to go in one basket or another. They’re either animate or inanimate, and all zoologically alive entities, well, [the grammatical term] “animate” sort of covers that. We don’t use animate usually for things on the botanical side. There’s this connection with the animal aspect. Anything that is alive in that sense automatically gets put into this one basket, and that being the case, all those nouns take the same sorts of endings and the verb and the noun will agree as to animacy or inanimacy.  So, to look at the inanimate nouns, the ones that, let’s say, we look at through a European mind, such as a refrigerator or television or a car or whatever, is now the test case then, because many of those are grammatically animate as Bernie said, they got into that same basket, o.k., as the zoologically alive nouns.

The question then is what kind of criteria are operating in the minds of Mi’kmaw speakers such that they seem to intuitively know which basket that new noun will come in? To get back to your question more specifically about the verb orientation of Mi’kmaw, yes, the verb does most of the work in Mi’kmaw, and nouns are often, as Bernie said, you can see that they’re related morphologically or morphophonemically to the verb. But that’s not to say that one came first or that one is more important.

One universal of all languages is that all languages need a subject and a predicate. They need a noun and a verb phrase. So, the human mind demands that first you have that something and then you say something about that thing. There’s no way to just speak in verbs because then you wouldn’t be talking about any thing, nor can you just speak in nouns because then you can’t predicate anything of that noun. So, all languages have nouns and verbs. If, as in the case with Mi’kmaw, the verbs do most of the work, then you can see that the nouns are [in] a kind of secondary role, but the nouns must agree with the inflection of the verbs, animate or inanimate. I don’t know if that cleared it up, but it’s a kind of an intuitive thing as a linguist when you see that all zoologically alive entities have this one set of endings, then you take that as your main case and try to explain all the residual cases from it though it doesn’t work all the time. 

HM      I don’t want to dominate the conversation, but with respect to this emphasis that is given to the modification of nouns or putting them into the two baskets of animate and inanimate, it seems that there are other linguistic baskets that exist besides animacy and inanimacy. There’s the question of duality or plurality, there’s questions of the ones that Peter Denny raised to say, as (has) been noted by all people who analyze Mi’kmaw, which is the fact that nouns belong to shape categories. They’re either flexible and bendable, or they’re containers, or cylindrical, and so on. Of all the possible grammatical distinctions that can be made, why the emphasis on animacy and inanimacy for an attempt to get at world view when those other things are equally grammatically significant.  

DS       Well, there’s a longstanding battle always going on in linguistics as to where you divide the line between semantics and syntax. Where you separate grammar from meaning. And noun endings, for example, that indicate plurality, they work along with animacy so that if a noun is animate, it takes a certain plural ending, and if it’s inanimate it takes another plural ending.  So, they work together.  Plurality and noun classification work hand in hand, as well as the obviative. When the obviative is used, it is always used with animate third person singular nouns. So, it’s not that it has to be all that important when it comes to world view because grammar to a great extent, is just convention; it’s a way of establishing laws or rules on how to speak. It’s the grammar, it’s what makes communication possible.  Where the meaning comes in, the world view, now you’re into the realm of semantics. Whether there’s anything to what Peter Denny suggests, that certain nouns reflect semantic categories such as long and cylindrical, or whatever it happens to be, that’s a semantic question, and most of those nouns that he’s talking about, I believe, are like infixes, they’re in the middle of a word. So, it’s a morphological thing. But that’s a semantic category.

And, the nouns aren’t categorized that way like they are animate and inanimate. Those are different orders. For example, if something’s long and cylindrical, I presume, I think I’m right, it can be animate or inanimate. It doesn’t matter. The animate inanimate is the basic grammatical distinction. It determines what the plural markers are going to be like, it determines what the verb endings are going to be like, and that’s the first obvious classification that you see in all the Algonquian languages. After that you’re looking at the semantics, which Bernie’s talking about. Looking at necessity, maybe necessity is a kind of criterion, but that’s a semantic criterion, not a syntactical [one]. 

RW      Could I ask you, is it possible to give us a quick list of categories of objects that go in the animate basket apart from the zoologically alive? 

DS       Bernie is the authority on that. He’s the Native speaker, but I don’t know how well you could categorize those (inaudible)

BF       No, I can only say that humans and animals are always animate. When you come to objects, then there’s not a hard and fast rule to tell you. A tree, for instance, in Mi’kmaw is referred to as kmu’j. That’s definitely animate. Someone would say ala kmu’k kaqmit. That same word becomes inanimate. Kmu’j also means a stick, not necessarily a tree, that may be lying on the ground. That’s definitely inanimate. Unless you do something with that stick. 

RW      Make it into a bow. 

BF       Make it into a bow. But then, you know, it’s not as simple as just making it into the bow. The stick is not necessarily what becomes animate, but the entire thing with the string on it, the fact that it is taut and so on, gives it that animacy. 

RW      Well is there anything to do with the landscape that is thought of as animate. 

BF       Not that I know of. 

RW      (Inaudible)

BF       No, but it may but…

RW      Gramatically? It can’t be animate (inaudible)? 

DS       I think an interesting place to look would be at the flora and (fruits?) that are growing because some are animate and some are inanimate. 

RW:     What about tobacco? (inaudible- Nespaqn?) Is it animate?

BF       What’s it mean?

RW      Nespaqn.

BF       I never heard of it, Ruth.

RW      You taught me how to spell it. (laughter)

BF       But, I have never heard of it in Mi’kmaw.

RW      (spells it out) Nespaqn. It’s a type of Native tobacco. 

BF       Oh, you must’ve been given for a proper spelling, but I’m not sure about that word at all. I would guess it’s inanimate though, but I’m not too sure. 

RW      What about medicinal plants? 

BF       Also inanimate. Such as ki’kwesu’sk (muskrat root, ed.) , pako’si and so on. All inanimate. It’s certain things, like for instance, like apples and potatoes, you know, whereby apples would be inanimate and potatoes would be animate. You know, there’s no…I mean you could say, “Well that’s because and apple is up here in the tree and the potatoes are down here.” There’s no real good argument, you know, to support that.  

RW      What about the sun, moon, stars? 

BF       Those are animate objects.  Such as na’ku’set (sun, ed.).  You refer to the na’ku’set as…Let’s say the word that you may use to test as to whether something is animate or inanimate is the word etek and epit.  That would give you an idea as to whether it’s animate or inanimate. It so happens that the sun is an animate object.

RW      What about earthquake, thunder? 

BF       They are animate in some cases, yeah. Or, for instance, take the sleet in wintertime that covers all the trees and so on. That’s animate, sleet. And that’s interesting, you know. It’s the one that’s very heavy that snaps.  You’ll hear the snapping of trees; it almost has an animate-like quality to it because it seems to make noise, it does something. So, they would say, in Mi’kmaw, it’s referred to as msikn, and msikn ika’t rather than ika’q. Thunder, yeah, because they say, from time to time, they say kaqtukowik, which means ‘our ancestors are raising their voices’ or something to that affect, so that’s animate as well.  But that’s not always the case.

TS        (inaudible) …all right, I just wanted to get back… it’s similar, related, it gets back to your turkey. 

BF       Oh yeah, okay. I wanted just to follow up with what Harold is saying with regards to the terms.  Sometimes the terminology, Harold…the Latin terms that are used are not so good when you’re describing Mi’kmaw.  For instance, the past, present, and future tenses in Mi’kmaw, sometimes are…it’s the best that we have in the moment, and I think that it’s okay to use them for now, but they are not always the best. You wonder if there is a true past, for instance, in Mi’kmaw. It just so happens Helen (Sylliboy) is here, I remember a particular incident. Helen did a paper one time in Fredericton—I think it was in Fredericton—and she didn’t do so well on her paper. She was mad as hell, got a 68 or something or other. And she showed me the paper, so I read the thing, you know. The more I got into it, I wanted to complete the whole thing. It was an excellent, excellent story. And then I wondered “Gee, well why did she get such a low mark?”  So I read it again. Then I realized it’s because she was jumping from present to past, past to present, all the time during the paper. In other words, it’s not because the story wasn’t good, but because the grammar was all over the place when she was dealing with past and present. That’s exactly the way that Mi’kmaw people discuss things or tell stories and so on. They may tell a story that happened years and years ago as if it was happening in the present. So I said to Helen, “Jesus, this is what happens, Helen,” and I explained to her what was going on. I said, “Take this god damn thing back and go see that professor.” And she did, and she came back with a higher mark. You know, once she was able to explain. 

HS       It was an English paper too. 

BF       (laughs) Yeah, that’s right. So, you see, I’m not absolutely sure all of the time whether these terms are (best for the moment?), but for a lack of better terms.  When Hewson and I were still working on modern grammar, I got rid of a lot of this stuff and started using some of the Mi’kmaw terms actually, which may refer to the so called past. 

HM      There are certain (inaudible) obviously.  There are other languages that only have two verb tenses. Japanese only has two verb tenses. So, is that what you’re suggesting happens in Mi’kmaw? 

BF       No, there are these notions, but what I am saying is I don’t know how true they are. I’m not really sure exactly what you mean by past in Mi’kmaw, that is. 

HS       (inaudible. You have a sort of imperfect past tense there?) Something that has already occurred and still occurs at the same time. 

TS:       I’m working with the science program in Mi’kmaw. So, what you were saying about turkey and characteristics in the word, describing the turkey. I’m thinking about in terms of seeing rocks or in terms of seeing trees, there’s a kind of descriptive…there’s a word I’m trying to think of.  It feels as though there’s a descriptiveness in the words that you were talking about like with the turkey? Can you say something about that in general? 

BF:      Yeah, actually that’s a good point, and I think that’s very true about Mi’kmaw.  It paints a picture for you.  English doesn’t seem to do that, at least it doesn’t do it for me, I can only speak for how I feel about it. I think I speak English well enough right now that I realize it doesn’t quite do the same thing. When someone speaks to me or tells me a story, you know, the picture that is formed in my mind is unmistakable. And it could be something very simple. For instance, I never do…there’s a guy in Sydney who walks up and down the street, you know, bumming cash, and I haven’t seen this guy for the past 10 years or something or even longer.  

One time I went to Eskasoni to visit this particular lady to try to—I think I was there to try to get a couple of Mi’kmaw names for something or other at the time.  Just as I walked in she’d just made a batch of tea, another lady walked in, a neighbor, and they immediately began having a conversation. One of them said to the other, “Did you go grocery shopping today?” And the woman said, “Yes I did.”  “So, where did you go?” And she said “Well, I went to the IGA.” She continued, and she said “But, I’m never, never going to go there again. I’m sick and tired of that place because every time I go there Asui’skipetesinte’w hits me up for money.”  

And immediately when she used that word I knew exactly who she was talking about in that one word. It’s the guy that walks—he has some sort of problem—and he walks like this (Bernie demonstrates, swiveling his head back and forth). Of course, in English, they call him ‘swivel head’. But, anyway, as soon as the entire phrase came out, I knew exactly, there was a picture in my mind, there was no mistake about who they were talking about. And then from that point, actually even earlier than that, I started to pay more attention about that idea, that notion about how everything seems to be much clearer when it comes across in Mi’kmaw. And I think it’s because it all comes together as a package because of the structure of the language – you get hit with it in a ball, as opposed to this fragmented fashion that English gives it to you. 

DS       Yeah, I just want to comment on that, because that’s one of the distinctive characteristics of Mi’kmaw. The verb is the locus, that’s where it happens, most noticeably. And aside from the inflection of the language, which indicates tense or person or what have you, you generally have in the verb several little pieces, which linguists call morphemes, that are fit together, and each little piece means something.  So, whereas English uses a clause, Mi’kmaw uses one word. So as Bernie’s saying there, that one word described (to Bernie) how would you describe the motion of this guy? What does the Mi’kmaw say? 

HS       “He’s swinging his head back and forth.”

BF       Yeah, “he’s swinging his head back and forth.” 

DS       O.k. It’s the same morpheme that’s used in turkey, isn’t it?  

BF       (Mi’kmaw word) Yeah. No, this one is the off part, back and forth.

DS       Okay, back and forth. So that one word contains something that indicates back and forth. It also contains something else. In English it takes a phrase, a least a phrase, sometimes a clause. A good way to see that is looking at the two verbs—I’m a bit rusty here Bernie but let’s take aja’si as opposed to ajiet. Where they both contain the same morpheme at the beginning, aj, but the –a’si indicates one kind of movement, more like  a bodily movement, if I’m not mistaken, whereas the –iet in ajiet indicates a smooth motion, almost a motion against some background  

BF       I’ll let you get to your remark (?), but the word (inaudible), ‘he walks’, and (inaudible), ‘he bounces’.

HS       Or even that word that he just used for turkey and its little head, one is a stationary back and forth movement, the other is a pendulum like movement, what he described.

DS       Okay. So, Mi’kmaw verbs have these little pieces in them and they stand for semantic material, which in English we need to express with adverbs or nouns, or verbs or adjectives. We have to separate them into English parts of speech. In Mi’kmaw, all that happens within one word. So, it’s the word that is most important, not the clause. 

HM      In the case of this guy, ‘Swivel-head,’ it’s pretty concise.

DS       Oh, it’s concise. 

HM      And conveys an image, maybe not exactly the same image as the Mi’kmaw word (?), but it has the (autonomy? economy?) but I agree, in general, Mi’kmaw is much more (economical (?) in terms…

DS       I don’t like to use those kinds of value terms because English is extremely efficient for what its purpose is, and Mi’kmaw is extremely efficient for what it tries to accomplish. There’s no yardstick, there’s no objective yardstick by which you can say what language is better than another. It’s what’s most useful for the culture and for their needs. 

HM      Back to Trudy’s notion of science and science curriculum, in Algonquian languages generally the truth of things that you wouldn’t phrase, say water comes in the spring.  In winter time, you would use a different word than that same spring, when that water comes in the same spring in the summer because of relative temperatures to the air and so on. 

(There is a short conversation between BF and HS about some terms for water that is difficult to hear.)

HM      Are there different terms for rabbit in the winter and the summer? 

BF       Yeah, there’s wapus, which I suspect comes from wape’k, it has a white coat in wintertime. But again, you know, this is something that I have heard over the years.  That’s just a wild guess, that apli’kmuj, which is what you said referred to—the rabbit in summertime—you know the coat is brown and so on. And wapus seems white, and it turns that way in the winter for camouflage purposes. So that’s a guess but it looks good. 

HM      No, but in terms of other categories, with Trudy’s science curriculum or science project, is it possible to assemble an inventory of items that we thought wa(inaudible)..as a physical log? 

BF       Yeah, I think so, but you’d have to sit down. I don’t know if anyone has actually done that, but that could be worked on, I would say. So, go ahead. (Trudy laughs) 

DS       You’d have to assemble a considerable amount of examples. 

TS        The words?  (inaudible)What words would you use? 

DS       Well it depends what you want them for what you want them to show? You’d have to look at a considerable amount of data.

HM      But, if the task is to get an understanding of Mi’kmaw comprehension of the universe and how it functions, then what, you know, what are the linguistic elements, what are the morphophonemic, syntactical, semantic elements that have to be understood in order to get those. I guess, is that the question? 

TS        Probably not the way you word it (TS laughs), but yes, I think it is. I mean I think what I’m gathering in some ways is simple, not linguistic principals, which is there seems to be a lot of descriptiveness and qualities of objects versus (cylindrical?) in form … that seems to be more what the emphasis is, is that what I’m..? 

BF       Yeah, I can say that it’s to deal with, uh, like landscape, for instance, is descriptive, yeah. The words that are used to describe a particular area is descriptive enough. 

TS        In terms of quality? 

BF       No, well, in terms of shape, really. Sometimes. Sometimes it could be another particular criterion. But sometimes it’s shape, you know. 

HM      I think this is the element, you know, is it shape that’s a fundamental aspect, or is it the form, what are the intrinsic elements of descriptive experience that’s encoded in the words?

BF       I’m not sure if I super understand your question but let me just give you something that’ a little bit what I’d call intrinsic as you’re asking.  The word for east in Mi’kmaw is wjipnuk that actually comes from the fact that ‘it is forever summer’. That’s where the word comes from.  I think that perhaps because the sun rises in the east. And api’nipn, or ‘forever summer’. Is that the kind of thing you’re talking about?

HM      You have to ask Trudy.

RW      What about stories? What about things that would be seen as inanimate in English taking human form in the story?  Lonecloud has lots of stories about directions as if they were animate beings. The princess of the south and her grandfather, who represents the north.  She also represents summer (?) (inaudible…she goes to visit him…) So, if you’re telling that story in Mi’kmaw, how would you refer? 

BF       As animate. As people. 

RW      But otherwise not? 

BF       Otherwise not. 

RW      Doesn’t the word change (inaudible:  as an animate ending?)

BF       That’s right. 

RW:     So, in some sense, direction can be animate? 

BF       That’s right. 

RW      Do you think in terms of world view, direction is seen as animate? 

BF       I’m not saying that. I’m saying that it all depends on how you use it. If you use it in a story as an entity, as an individual let’s say, yeah, that’s all I’m saying, that would be animate in that case. 

DS       Because you personified it.

BF       That’s right, yeah.

RW      So, you can personify anything basically if you tell a story about them as a person? 

BF       Yeah. 

TS        (inaudible: male and female as well?) 

BF       Yeah, you can do that too. (chuckles) 

TS       I’m just looking at what you said about Creator.

RW      Could you say what you just said a little bit louder?

TS        I said and make it male and female. You were talking about Creator, the notion of Creator, being either male or female. 

BF       Either male or female, yeah.  There’s no distinction. There’s no one way or the other. It’s just that all the words that exist for Creator are all verbs except the ones that were invented by missionaries. Ankweyulkw, Kisu’lkw, Tekweyulkw and so on. They conjugate just like any other verb.

RW      And what do they mean? 

BF       Ankweyulkw, ‘he who looks after us’.  Tekweyulkw, ‘he or she who stays with us’, so on. 

HM      But you can feminize any noun by adding a suffix. (BF: Can you? (laughs) When a distinction has to be made, is it made by marking… 

BF       Yeah, you’d probably have i’sk at the end of it. So, that’s feminizing.  

DS:      And you can diminutivize with –ji’jat the end, or ‘ej or something like that. 

HM      So, while there’s no natural gender to Mi’kmaw language, that’s not to suggest that it’s not possible to make gender distinctions. 

DS       Right. 

BF:      (laughs) I remember, that’s the same question that a nun asked one time at Wycocomagh. “Well how do these people even know how to tell the difference?”

            And I said, “Well, they obviously know with all these little children running around.” (laughter)

DS       When necessary. 

BF       Yeah, when necessary. 

TS        Where did the idea of hunting being courtship come around, and the notion of six worlds, too? Can you say anything about…You talk about the six worlds in your book (addressing Ruth Whitehead, ed.), but I always wondered what that looked like in Mi’kmaw language. And also, there’s another notion in hunting, of courtship, you said this (T.S. addresses Harold McGee who responds it is from the Cree) between animal and hunter.  I was curious about that, too. You got anything to say? No? No worries. Nothing to say about the six worlds? I’m just wondering where they came from, the notion of the six worlds. 

RW      I just got it because of the stories they talk about separate worlds… but there’s some kind of formalized recognition that the universe is structured into six worlds, it’s just  stories (difficult to hear this section)

TS        I wondered if there’s any words in Mi’kmaw other than… 

BF       No. There are words, for instance, there are words for ‘flat’ or ‘underneath’, and that’s quite significant, but without sophisticated heavy equipment, you can only get so far digging with a stick. So, we have words like wskitqamu, is the word for the world. It’s interesting because the first morpheme tells you ‘surface’. And it comes from the word, wsit—‘it’s on the surface’. Qamu is the word for sphere. But then you also have lamqamu, and the first morpheme tells you it’s underneath something, is (Mi’kmaw).  But then you have qamu as well. I presume you’re talking about the sphere below the first sphere, something under the earth sphere, things like that.

            It could be various levels of development too, you know, personal development. Such as the Winnebagos. Winnebagos have an interesting way whereby there are four stages of development for a human being, and the first stage, I think, is called a trickster. You know, a child growing up does all sorts of funny things and crazy things, and he’s totally preoccupied with himself or herself, and he (is) totally uncaring about anyone else. That’s the trickster stage. Then there’s another stage. I forget the name of that second stage where the child, or at adolescence, starts to wake up a little more, you know. Then there’s the third stage, I think it’s called the red bone(?) stage whereby the child becomes an adult and realizes there’s a little bit more to be, you know. There’s a bit more to life than just looking after ‘me’ now, all these responsibilities. The very last one is…I believe…I forgot the name. There’s a last stage whereby you mature to the point where you’re not overly interested in that hero myth anymore that you might have been when you were younger. It dispels the notion that it’s not necessarily important to be a hero, to be noticed, to be somebody, this kind of thing. Just to learn.  About (inaudible) that these stages also exist in the Mi’kmaw world, although not overtly at the moment. At least I haven’t discovered any in specific terms. Except we have ki’kwa’ju (wolverine, ed.) which is quite the trickster, you know, but I haven’t been able to link the two together.

TS        Where did you find the words you just described? 

BF       I don’t remember. Jeez, I think it was you that talked about that, which was interesting. I was really surprised that he dealt with that, you know. And I think it was him. 

HM      Can I ask a question of literacy(?). One of the things that freezes language, and one of the things that happens in an oral tradition, in a literary tradition, is the possibility of growth, or the possibility of adaptation to changing circumstances so that new value can be incorporated into old stories and that you have a growing tradition. What happens when you get(?) text is that you wind up with an authoritative text as the right way to tell the story.  Writing serves a multiplicity of purposes, to write letters to your grandmother, to write instructions for how to do something and so on. But most First Nations language programs are often couched in terms of ‘preservation of the language’, and ‘saving the language’. I guess my concern is, my question is, does it also make it archaic? Does it freeze it in time, does it turn it into a museum piece? As opposed to a living, dynamic language, and I guess the question is how do you take the writing of Indigenous languages and make them living literary languages as well as living spoken languages? 

DS       Of course, it takes time. To become a literary language, you have to have people writing in it, creating it, and then you’ll get a variety of expressions, a variety of interpretations, ways of telling a story or something like this, the same story. Even in the long European tradition of writing, there have been variations. The problem is there’s too many different stories even though there has been writing. I think what’s happening today is, what they now talk about as the postmodern era, where we’re getting away from the sacred[ness of] texts [because of their being one-of-a-kind originals (DS edit)  ], so to speak. The computer and the media possibilities now [allow anyone whosoever] make it possible to get in and alter anything. You can get into a photo and alter [it], you can get into any kind of a document and alter it. So even though the literacy is there, the computer is adding an element of flow or a non-predictable element. I don’t think it’s much of a price to pay, in any case. You do sacrifice, as you say, in the oral tradition, you sacrifice the kind of creativity that goes on every time the story is told. But you have to look at what you gain. You gain the ability to create your own stories for other people, so you can pass [them] on. Particularly in this day and age where we can photocopy, or multiply copies, that’s something that couldn’t be done during [a strict] oral tradition. You had to have people alive who could remember the story and then could tell it. Of course, mistakes were even made then. 

HM:     My concern is less the issue of mistakes and more a question of growth and change. You were talking about how the words can become contracted, it doesn’t make them any less Mi’kmaw because they’re contracted. It doesn’t make the older word more Mi’kmaw. 

HS       Antiquated, and the other one is because of usage. What is the correct terminology to use, like I’ll take the word (Mi’kmaw) and (Mi’kmaw). It’s interchangeably used. 

DS       Well, you can find out what the earlier term was usually by looking at other languages. Often in Mi’kmaw you’ll see that a ‘k’ [sound]will become an ‘s’ [sound] in front of an ‘s’ [sound],  [or] something like this. [An ‘n’sound becomes an ‘m’ [sound] because of the ‘p’ sound. The ‘p’ [sound is bilabial, [that is, is made with] both of the lips, and so the ‘n’ [sound] becomes an ‘m’ [sound] because an ‘m’ [sound is also made with] both lips too. Common assimilation type of thing. But the correctness [or lack of] [as to pronunciation] is [based on] an agreement among the speakers. 

HS       Like Bernie calls this ‘extra vowel syndrome’ that I have. When I write, I have this extra vowel, I’m not gonna say what Bernie calls it, because I do have an extra vowel in my writing because I can hear a different sound.  But when we’re talking about it, that vowel in there is not really necessary and I’m putting it in because in my own head, I can hear it. When he thinks about the word, he doesn’t hear it because he doesn’t put that extra sound. What I do is what you call dialectical differences from communities.

BF       Sure, I’ve considered that (what?) is called the Annie Mason syndrome. That’s back in 1979. Because we have one person that might say, ‘I’m walking home’—elmlekai. Then you have someone else who’d say elimlekai, an extra syllable. Then you have Annie Mason who might say, helimlekai. But those are just examples. But another thing, I want to comment on that point you brought up, fixing, let’s say, some of the stories because writing…. You know that there is a…that’s a point well take. I’ll say there’s no choice in this day and age but to write Mi’kmaw. There is no choice. If you don’t write it, then you don’t pass on at least…I don’ t care whether you pass on the story. This is my feeling. I’m more concerned about passing on an idea for another story. That’s what I use it for. That to me is extremely important. I may give another Mi’kmaw a story to read it and say, “Gee, yeah, I know a variation to this,” and then on and on it goes. It’s not likely the Mi’kmaq are, they’re not likely to plagiarize.

HM      Is there any danger of them becoming only… 

BF       You’re talking about them being in danger of being standard. 

HM      Not so much standardized. Where the written language becomes the substitute for the spoken language. 

BF       Yup, there is always that danger. That’s for sure. In fact, I just brought up an incident whereby (mentions a name).  That seems to happen sometimes. It’s happened to me and happened to everyone else whereby once something is established, to make the changes is a real effort. There’s always a danger of that.  As Doug said, I think that doesn’t outweigh the benefits. 

HS       I think the only challenge of literacy, I think we have to expose the written language much more in the communities than we have in the past. I know in New Brunswick and Quebec some of the work in language in the band councils is Mi’kmaw; they’ll write their inter-office whatever in Mi’kmaw, and there are signs in Mi’kmaw.  But if that sign says Naqa’si (Stop) you don’t understand the language, you don’t know you have to stop at that sign. So, the knowledge should be in the head of the person who’s reading that sign. A stop sign is a normal red whatever, so you should make that connection right away, but if you don’t have (a memory?) and a function for the language, otherwise it’s totally useless to you. 

RW      Can I ask, how the two of you get together? Did you decide to… 

BF       (inaudible)(everyone laughs) 

DS       Well it’s sort of a long story as to how I actually got out to Membertou, but I went out in 1971, I believe it was, through some connections. Gordon MacDonald, the late Gordon MacDonald, was chief at the time [and previously he and I had met in Toronto], and he arranged for me to meet a Mi’kmaw lady in Toronto, and it was her parents that I ended up living with for about 6 months. At the time Bernie was living in Membertou as well. Being about the same age, we had some similar interests like athletics and things like that. I recognized in Bernie, aside from being a friend and somebody I had something in common with, he was very gifted in the language and had an interest in it, had a good ear.  So, we started working together. He helped me through the adjustment period living in Membertou. It was [very] different from living [in downtown] Toronto! So, that’s how we came to know each other.

BF       I, in turn, never thought that a time would come that a non-Indian, a non-Native speaker particularly, would help me correct my own Mi’kmaw.  But, that’s what Doug was able to do because of his training. As I was beginning, we would work on a word.  He might ask me the pronunciation of a particular word, and I’d give the word. Of course, he’d go back home that night or the next day he worked out something, and he would say, “Well, is it possible that it’s this?” I’d say, “Yeah, yeah, it’s possible. “ And he said, “Well, if you look at the entire thing, is it this?” “Yeah, I guess it is.” 

 So, as time went on, I began to see the flaws in my own language. Even though I was a fluent speaker, there were certain things I was missing completely and didn’t take into account. For instance, the word for ‘uncle’ is one of them. And I always used to say Ntlamuksis, ‘nt’. Now that doesn’t mean anything in Mi’kmaw, ntlamuksis. But when I used that word I always meant uncle when in fact it was nklamuksis, with a ‘k’. Now suddenly the word means something. Nklumuksis, which means ‘the guy who looks after you in the event of some problem with the father’, or so on, or someone who is (?)

But that’s just a minor example of some of the ways in which I corrected my Mi’kmaw. In addition to…of course, Doug left me a bunch of tools that he taught me over a five- year period. When he left, I applied the tools and continued on with teaching the language, while at the same time was working with also Dr. Hewson in Memorial University in Newfoundland. He and I worked out the entire paradigms of both intransitive and transitive verbs. 

And I never thought that I could actually keep all this stuff straight in my head. I can actually take a transitive verb and give you the entire paradigm, which is about 400 different endings that would mean something different every single time. When I first did it I was quite amazed that I could do it and understand them all. But then the more I did, the more I realized I had to rely on that little board I had in my room. Because later on, I could go on like this for an hour and a half, then I’d have to leave the room because I’d get so completely…I would lose where I’m at in the verb and I would start to interpret them as if they were the previous stuff I had done with the same verb. It just gets mountains after a while.

 But if I could relay a story, a little story, about the first time I realized I was picking up this stuff, Doug and I had been working two years at that time. Of course, when Doug asked me in the very beginning in ’74 if I would be interested in studying linguistics, he set me forth. He asked if I’d be interested in studying linguistics. I said maybe I would, if I knew what it was. (laughs) So anyway, I said, “Okay, let’s talk about it.” I remember you brought (inaudible) material one time and you asked me if I could read it, and my immediate response was no, I can’t read it. Then he said try it. So, I looked at it and sure enough, I could read it, only with a minimal amount of difficulty. But I was sitting in an office one day, for two years, working with him every single day at the language. By that time, I had gotten quite adept at using linguistic terms and so on. Our board was sitting here, we were doing a structural analysis on a particular verb, I forget which it was. And Doug would be here and I’d be behind him. We were having trouble with this word, Doug said, “Well we can’t do it this way,” and he’d go on a big long explanation why. And I’d look at it for a minute and say, “Yeah, but we can for this reason,” and go on a big long explanation as to why we could. He’d look at it again and come back with a counter argument. And finally, I’d come back with a counter argument. For the longest time he just sat there. Then he looked at me and said you’re finally thinking like a scientist.  

But, it took two years for me to win my first argument, you see, so it was from that point on that I gained more and more confidence. I became more and more interested as a result because I could see that magnifying glass, or microscope that he gave me to work with, and that’s how I came to picture it was putting it under a microscope. He left in 1980. I remember him saying to me, I feel redundant. It was almost like throwing me out in the ocean and saying swim, buddy. There were a lot of things that had to be dealt with. One of my greatest oppositions was Helen. (chuckles) What’re you changing that for? (in Helen’s style) There was so many others. Within a few years, they were my greatest allies. One session we had in Eskasoni—this one time where I had the same argument—I didn’t feel like defending myself anymore. This woman was giving me a rough time about the writing system, she said why are you changing this. Just when she finished as I was getting ready to answer, these two women, Barbara and (inaudible), they got on their feet, and they just went (shows hands converging). And I just gradually sunk back down. 

HS       It was because of the internal arguments that were growing up, you’d learn why things would have to mean. We knew the reason and didn’t know how to explain how or why. And afterwards it became clear to us. When they first started with this system it was an entirely different system, I don’t know if you remember at the time, but I was working with Mi’kmaq abusing the English words to teach non-Native to speak the language.

BF       You and many others were doing that at the time. 

HS       Because it was simpler than to explain, like the vowel system that we’re using now is (Mi’kmaw). Rather than going to explain why we’re using that, it was easier to use the English words to convey the Mi’kmaw word we want them to speak back. 

TS        I think we have to go, thank you very much.