WHY CREE IS THE FUNNIEST OF ALL LANGUAGES

{ TOMSON HIGHWAY }

OF THE three to six thousand languages linguists have determined exist in the world—the prevalence of dialects makes it impossible to pin down a number—each has its own special genius. I am fortunate enough to be familiar with three of these: English, French and the language I spoke to the exclusion of all others until age seven, Cree.

English is an intellectual, cerebral language. It comes from, and lives in, the head, and does so in a manner most brilliant. French, par contre, is an emotional language, a language of the senses. It comes from, and lives in, the heart. And in the stomach. If you don’t believe me, try calling your loved one “my cabbage, my lamb, my rabbit, my duck, my pussy, my pet, my casserole dish” with a straight face and see what kind of reaction you get. In French, it makes perfect sense to talk this sensually; in English, it is downright embarrassing. If you still don’t believe me, try travelling back and forth between France and England and see what kind of food you find in each country. In one, the food is fantastic, utterly divine. If, as legend has it, the Inuit have forty words for snow, then the French have easily 350 words for cheese, some of which “orgasm” their way down your throat, which is the only way I have ever been able to describe the sensation in English. Foie gras? You die of the senses when you eat it and then float up to heaven. And then there is the wine. In England, by comparison, the food is decidedly un-fantastic, shall we say (that’s putting it politely). But British Airways? Ho-la-la. The world’s best, most efficient, most powerful airline, bar none. Works like a well-oiled engine. Two thousand planes, most of them the size of mansions, that reach all four corners of the world.

Cree, my mother tongue, is neither a language of the mind nor a language of the senses. It is a language of the flesh. A physical language. It lives in the human body not above the neck, as English does, not between the neck and the waist, as French does, but one step lower: between the waist and the thighs. Cree lives in the groin, in the sex organs. It lives, that is to say, in the most fun-loving, the most pleasurable—not to mention the funniest-looking—part of the human corpus: a region of the body that has, for reasons I will posit later, become so alienated from the head that speaking of it in English is a shameful, dirty, embarrassing, disgusting, dare one say evil thing to do.

Since I am writing this essay in English, the part of you that is most alive as you read is your brain. If I were writing in French, and you were reading it accordingly, the most alive parts of you would be your heart and your stomach. Try something as simple as this: “Bonjour, Barbara, ça va?” “Oui, ça va. Et toi?” “Pas pire. Mais écoute, ma belle, je voudrais te dire quelque chose…” You see? Your mouth even starts to water when your tongue and lips wrap themselves around those syllables! But if I were writing this in Cree, and you were reading it that way, then what you would be doing is laughing, laughing constantly, laughing so hard your sides would hurt. Somewhere deep inside of you, there would be a zany sensation perpetually on the simmer, perpetually on the verge of exploding into a wild cry of intoxicating, silly, giddy pleasure.

For instance, pronouncing the words syllable by syllable, and at the speed of lightning, say the following: “Winnipeg, Manitoba, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Mistassini, Chicoutimi, Chibougamou, Quebec, Temagami, Mattawa, Ottawa, Canada.” That, in essence, is Cree. That is the natural rhythm and musicality of the language. Now, with the same feeling, rhythm and speed, say this: “Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, awinuk awa oota kaa-pee-pee-tig-weet? ”* Practise it until you get it note perfect. You will find, very quickly, that even if you don’t have a clue what you are saying, you are already smiling. If you practise it with friends, you will all be laughing. And laughing not lightly, but from the pit of your respective groins. The syllables sound comical not only in and of themselves but in the way they are strung together. It is as if a clown lives inside them. And a clown does, in fact, live inside those syllables, of which more in a minute.

Thus far, you know the syllables to the above Cree sentence only with your tongue, your teeth, your lips, your palate and your windpipe. Now on to the meaning. Let’s start with the syllable neee. As with so many cultural concepts, the word is untranslatable, but we could come close with English expressions such as “oh dear” or “oh my goodness” or “good grief ” or “yeah, right” or “you little slut” (in the affectionate, teasing sense) or “you little bastard” (ditto). Then again, neee could mean something as simple as “hey.” It could even be a combination of the above. You can, moreover, extend the sound for as long as you want to, depending on how you feel at any given moment, or how silly you want to act, or how you want to stress what you are about to say next. So this neee, realistically speaking, could be as short as neee. Or it could go on for as long as this (try it): Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. (Hope you remembered to take a great big breath beforehand!) There, I bet you ten dollars you’re laughing again. Or at least smiling.

Now try the following at lightning speed: Chipoo-cheech (puppy). Eemana-pitee-pitat (he’s pulling his tooth out). Eemoomineet (she’s picking berries). Neeeeeee, aspin eena-mateet (oops, she’s gone, disappeared, pffft!). Each syllable, each word is like a tickle in the kipoo-chim (blowhole, i.e., rectum); you sit there secretly squirming with visceral pleasure at the same moment as your intellect is being scandalized, especially by the kipoo-chim—yikes! Try this on a friend or, better yet, your boss: “Get him in the kipoo-chim, bang him in the box.” That is the Cree sense of humour—utterly ridiculous. It comes shooting out of the language natural as air.

Let’s go back to our original sentence and translate it word for word into English. “Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, awinuk awa oota kaa-pee-pee-tig-weet?” Neee we’ve discussed already. Next is awinuk, which means “who” (as it does in Ojibway, Blackfoot, Mi’kmaq, and at least thirty other Algonquian languages). The term awa, roughly speaking, turns the awinuk into a question, as in “who is this?” or “who is that?” Oota means “here.” Pee-tig-weet means, roughly, “coming in”; in this case, by its context, “coming in the door,” even though the door itself (isk-wa-teem) is not specified. (“Pee-tig-weet!” means “Come in!”—the greeting you call when someone comes knocking at your door.) And the kaa-pee in front of the pee-tig-weet turns the “coming in” into an immediate event, as in “coming in the door just now, right at this moment.” So there you go. What the sentence means in its entirety, in English, is: “Hey, who is coming in the door?”

Now I ask you: Is that sentence funny in English? As a fluent English-speaker, permit me to answer the question for you: it is not funny, not in the least. Nothing inside you laughs for even a fraction of a second. But in Cree, the sentence is not only funny, it is hysterical; one might even say there is a cartoonish quality to it. It is as if Porky Pig or Bugs Bunny or Elmer Fudd is about to enter through that door. And that is the visceral reality of the Cree language.

As I roam the world physically and intellectually and slide ever so gracefully into my fifties, I find myself unravelling year by year the meaning of one truly fascinating piece of information. And that piece of information is this: When Christopher Columbus arrived in North America in October of the year 1492—a date arguably among the most important in our history as a people—probably the most significant item of baggage he had on his ship was the extraordinary story of a woman who talked to a snake in a garden and, in so doing, precipitated the eviction of humankind from that garden. This seminal narrative has created severe trauma in the lives of many, many people and ultimately, one might argue, the life of our entire planet. I don’t think it is any coincidence that the mythology/theology this story comes from, Christianity, has at its centre the existence of a solo god who is male and male entirely.

Such a narrative—the eviction from a garden—most explicitly does not exist in Native North American mythology/ theology (which also has not a monotheistic but a pantheistic super-structure or dream world). The Sinai Peninsula, at least as it appeared in Columbus’s monotheistic world view, may have been a parched, treeless desert cursed by a very angry male god, but North America, our home and Native land, certainly was not. Quite the contrary: our land is blessed with the most extraordinary, lake-filled, forest-rich, food-filled, mind-boggling beauty. And North America is a landscape blessed most generously, most copiously, by a benevolent female god, one known to us, in the English language, as our Mother, the Earth.*

And then there is our Mother’s son/daughter, that insane, hermaphroditic progeny of hers, so endlessly shape-shifting and malleable that he, if need be, can turn herself, amoeba-like, into any number of different characters. I speak here, of course, of the Trickster, that cosmic clown, that laughing deity whose duty is to teach us a fundamental lesson: that the reason for our existence on this planet is not to suffer, not to wallow in guilt, but to celebrate the experience of living, to eat from the Tree of Knowledge as often, and with as much gusto, as we can.

If languages, as I have come to believe, are shaped by mythologies, world views, collective dream worlds, then English is indelibly marked by that first eviction from the garden. And to this day, the language stops at the gate to that garden. It is forbidden, by an angel who guards the gate jealously with a large flaming sword, to ever re-enter. English speakers are not to partake of the Tree of Knowledge, laden with the most delicious fruit there is. Only God can do so; such pleasure as is to be found in the garden is reserved exclusively for His enjoyment. Cree, by comparison, did not give birth to a culture of jumbo jets that circumnavigate the globe with the efficiency of clockwork. Nor does it have a national literature that has helped to shape world history; not yet, anyway. But try speaking Cree in a virgin forest on some northern lake and you will find, very quickly, that it is pure genius.

In Cree, there is no gate blocking the entrance to—or the exit from—the garden. There is no angel with a flaming sword put there to thwart us. We are allowed into that garden of joy, that garden of beauty, to gambol about as much as we want to. The Trickster—Weesageechak in Cree, Nanabush in Ojibway, Itkomi in Sioux, Raven on the West Coast, Glooscap on the East, Coyote on the Plains—also lives inside the garden. And lives there most pleasurably, sparking to life the syllables of a language that expresses the shudder of excitement that springs from the heart of that garden, from the very Tree of Knowledge itself, a tree that is, as we speak, being tweaked and tickled and pinched and… well… you don’t even wanna know. In English, you can’t. In English, you are not allowed to talk like that. You will go to Hell. (Or, at the very least, you will not get published.) So stop it!

Here, for purposes of comparison, is a creation myth that should knock the socks right off your English-speaking feet and, in the process, make you laugh until you’re bent over double. There are many creation myths across Native North America, and many of them are untranslatable into English. Still, let me try this one on you. It comes to us from the Blackfoot Nation of southern Alberta/northern Montana. The Blackfoot are related to us Cree, not least in language, both tongues rising from Algonquian roots as they do. I choose this story because I think it illustrates, to perfection, the humour at the essence of the Trickster, whose energy spreads into all corners of the Native North American dream world. One small request: Please pretend you are reading this story not in English but in Cree.

· · · · · · · ·

IN THE BEGINNING there were only two human beings in this world, Old Man Coyote and Coyote Woman. Old Man Coyote lived on one side of the world, Coyote Woman on the other. By chance, they met.

“How strange,” said Old Man Coyote. “We are exactly alike.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Coyote Woman. “You’re holding a bag. What’s inside it?”

Old Man Coyote reached into his bag and brought out a penis. “This odd thing.”

“It is indeed an odd thing,” said Coyote Woman. “It looks funny. What is it for?”

“I don’t know,” said Old Man Coyote. “I don’t know what to use it for. What do you have inside your bag?”

Coyote Woman dug deep into her bag and came up with a vagina. “You see,” she said, “we are not alike. We carry different things inside our bags. Where should we put them?”

“I think we should put them into our navels,” said Old Man Coyote. “The navel seems to be a good place for them.”

“No, I think not,” said Coyote Woman. “I think we should stick them between our legs. Then they will be out of the way.”

“Well, all right,” said Old Man Coyote. “Let’s put them there.” So they placed these things between their legs.

“You know,” said Coyote Woman, “it seems to me that the strange thing you have there would fit this odd thing of mine.”

“Well, you might be right,” said Old Man Coyote. “Let’s find out.” So Old Man Coyote stuck his penis into Coyote Woman’s vagina.

“Umm, that feels good,” said Coyote Woman.

“You are right,” said Old Man Coyote. “It feels very good indeed. I have never felt this way before.”

“Neither have I,” said Coyote Woman. “It’s occurred to me that this might be the way to make other human beings. It would be nice to have company.”

“It certainly would,” said Old Man Coyote. “Just you and me could become boring.”

“Well, in case doing what we just did should result in bringing forth more human beings, what should they look like?” said Coyote Woman.

“Well, I think they should have eyes and a mouth going up and down.”

“No, no,” said Coyote Woman. “Then they would not be able to see well, and food would dribble out of the lower corner of their mouths. Let’s have their eyes and mouths go crosswise.”

“I think that the men should order the women about,” said Old Man Coyote, “and that the women should obey them.”

“We’ll see about that,” said Coyote Woman. “I think that the men should pretend to be in charge and that the women should pretend to obey, but that in reality, it should be the other way around.”

“I can’t agree to this,” said Old Man Coyote.

“Why quarrel?” said Coyote Woman. “Let’s just wait and see how it will work out.”

“All right, let’s wait and see. How should the men live?”

“The men should hunt, kill buffalo and bears, and bring the meat to the women. They should protect the women at all times,” said Coyote Woman.

“Well, that could be dangerous for the men,” said Old Man Coyote. “A buffalo bull or a bear could kill a man. Is it fair to put the men in such danger? What should the women do in return?”

“Why, let the women do the work,” said Coyote Woman. “Let them cook, and fetch water, and scrape and tan hides with buffalo brains. Let them do all these things while the men take a rest from hunting.”

“Well, then, we agree upon everything,” said Old Man Coyote.

“Then it’s settled.”

“Yes,” said Coyote Woman. “And now why don’t you stick that funny thing of yours between my legs again?”

. . . . . . . .

SO THERE YOU GO. In one group’s collective world view, the act of creation is inseparable from an act of rage: revenge on humankind for engaging in physical pleasure, the eating of fruit from a certain tree. In the other, the act of creation is an act of joy, a kick in the pants, one good fuck. In the language of the God—the language of the head—such a human act is gross and unnatural, the apogee of evil. In the language of the goddess— the language of the groin, the womb—it is the most natural act imaginable. When creating the universe and everything in it, one god may have said, “Let there be light,” but the other—his wife, the one we never hear of, the one He tried beating to her death with a big sledgehammer—begged to differ. What she said instead was, “Let there be laughter.”

* A note on pronunciation: The soft g—as in “George” or “gel”—does not exist in the Cree language. All g’s are hard, as in “girl” or “gig.”

* As is true in all Native North American languages (all that I know of, anyway), Cree has no pronouns that distinguish between “he” and “she” or possessives that make a distinction between “her” and “his.” The closest the language comes is a combined form: “he/she” and “her/his.” In that sense, regardless of whether we are male biologically or female biologically, we are all “he/she’s.” As is God, one would think.