Fire 1
Annie’s Three Examples of the Coos Bay Milluk Version of the Word: In the Milluk texts, Mrs. Peterson is transcribed most often as having pronounced this word as | hɛ́məltʼ | and | hɛ́miltʼ |, with a different vowel in the last syllable than Lolly has in her version of the word. Annie’s pronunciation of it as | hɛ́mɛltʼ |, occurs only three times out of the 28 times that the word occurs in the Milluk texts. One of those three times is where it is glossed as ‘fire (wood)’ in the text titled “He eats human children”. The published version of the text is in Jacobs’ first (1939) volume of Coos Texts, on pages 56-58. The example is at the bottom of page 57.
Annie Echoing Tar Heels’ Coos Bay Milluk Pronunciation: Jacobs’ footnote 45 at the bottom of page 56, says that all Coos knew the story “He eats human children”, but that Mrs. Peterson specifically mentioned old Tar Heels as telling it. He was a Coos Bay Milluk person like Lolly. Moreover, the story has a specifically Coos Bay Milluk locale. The other two times that the pronunciation | hɛ́mɛltʼ | occurs in the Milluk texts are in Jacobs’ numbered paragraph 18 of the Trickster Epic. That text might also be said to have a Coos Bay Milluk locale, but with the text “He eats human children”, the Coos Bay Milluk locale is especially clear, not just something that might be said about the story. It seems that when Annie Miner Peterson dictated that story to Jacobs she was echoing how Tar Heels told the story right down to pronouncing the Milluk word meaning ‘fire’ in his Coos Bay Milluk way of pronouncing it.
Instant Phonetic Englishization: Like saying ‘ham’ and ‘melt’ as one word, but with only one m, and popping the final consonant.
Lolly’s Two Examples of Annie’s Version of the Word as [ hɛ́mɪltʼ ]: Much later in the interview, Swadesh asks again for the Milluk word meaning ‘fire’. Below, we have a table of transcriptions for what Lolly said in that later interview segment. See the interview segment "Fire 2". Lolly only said twice the version of the word with [ ɪ ] in the second syllable, out of the five times that she says the word in that interview segment, and she did not even say the two examples of the word pronounced that way in a row. She pronounced the word that way only after being badgered by Swadesh to speak louder. The badgering to speak louder was something that she had put up with quite a bit by that point in the interview. She was actualy speaking loud enough and she must have realized that. Swadesh evidently wanted to have her repeat words without suggesting that there was anything wrong with how she was saying them. Lolly evidently understood that too and seemed exasperated. That is when she went beyond her own normal Coos Bay Milluk way of saying the word and said it in one of Annie’s two ways of saying the word which are evidently not the normal Coos Bay Milluk way of saying the word. Something similar happens in the interview segment that we have online as “Neck 2”, which occurs even later in the interview: