Washo Review

As I was waiting for a friend this weekend at a BART station, I found myself with substantial time on my hands. After I had paced up and down a few dozen times, I decided to do a mental review of the Washo vocabulary I knew. This was a true test, as I had neither the book from which I learned it nor the dictionary which I created for the terms I had learned. I decided to start with the verbal roots (although there is no true distinction between verbal and nominal roots in Washo), since verbs are often associated with actions, and perhaps my muscle memory would aid the big grey muscle in my skull. The verbs went well; I could conjure up most of the basic verb roots, even if I temporarily flipped the verbs in the wake/sleep contrast. I even went over the reduplication process for certain plurals, although some verbs, such as 'dance', did not lend themselves to such project.

I experienced some difficulty in remembering the various movement verbs, of which there are many in Washo, more than in Russian. My eye for language patterns tells me that all these movement verbs are ultimately connected, but I lack a sufficient overview to analyze them properly. It was difficult to generate several, and I am sure I missed few: perhaps this reduction is typical of individuals who do not speak a language well (and, Lord knows, I stumble over the words of the Washo tongue). It is nice to distinguish between various means of locomotion, but a simple 'go' will suffice.

As confident in my verbal score as I could be without recourse to a lexicon, I decided to try to conjugate a verb for every combination of subject and direct object. Although this task was made simpler by the lack of grammatical number marking on the verb, a characteristic of many Native American languages, I had to pick two verbs because the subject-object prefixes differ if the root begins with a consonant or vowel. I was successful save in one regard: I could not recall the prefix for 'he Xs me' if the root began with a consonant. Nonetheless, I decided that I had passed my test with an A-, considering how long it had been since I studied the material.

(I notice that I have not finished the drafts of posts on the Washo language regarding vowel coloring and the development of subject-object prefixes. I need to remedy that and add something on the reduplication process of Washo.)