VILLAGE ENGLISH

     There is English and then there is village English.  Here in Kotlik and all of the villages on the Yukon Delta I have visited they speak a village English where syntax is a little jumbled from what we are used to and phrases have different meaning.

        Time has a new identity.  I’ve been asked “You always walk your dog?” by people when they see me walking around town with Hobart.  I want to reply that I do not always walk Hobart. I do other things at various times besides walk Hobart but at this minute I am walking a dog.  You see, “always” and “never” mean something different in village English.  ‘Always’ can mean ‘sometimes you do’, and ‘never’ can mean ‘sometimes you don’t’.  So in village English the phrase “You always sometimes never let us play games.”, makes perfect sense. 

    “ I need a this kind.”, “Do you have a this kind?”, “Get me a this kind”.  I hear this one all of the time.  Instead of the phrase “one of these”, in village English it’s “this kind”.  So you hold up a pencil and say “I need a this kind”.

     Pronouns are not what they seem here.  “We”, “she”, “he” isn’t always used in the traditional way.  I’ve been asked in class if “us are going to watch a movie”.  Or, “her isn’t here today because her is sick”. 

     Another common one is “Where you are going?” which is translated to mean “where are you going?”.  If something is lost you would politely ask “Where it is?”

     The one that has me puzzled the most is “try see”.  I can’t figure out where this one originated.  Where most people would say “Can you let me hold that?”, or “Can I see that?” the phrase here is “try see?”.  So if a friend is holding a basketball that you especially covet you might say to the friend “Try see?”.  And if he asks what you want you could point at the ball and say “this kind”.