Oldal 60 [60]
OCR
LITERARY CODE-SWITCHING [T]o bea fluent speaker in every sense imaginable requires of us to be fluent listeners first. We were hearing and listening even before we let the river carry us from our Mom’s womb, and we’ve been hearing and listening ever since. It’s the only way we become fluent—and that is to listen far more than we speak.?° Significantly, the verses quoted above are followed by multiple stanzas of word lessons detailing Cree words through various thematic word groups, including food, trees, seasons, weather, nature, kinship terms, verbs, life and death, and so on. Mcllwraith smoothly switches between English and Cree not only practicing Cree in her writing, but also offering these language lessons to the reader. The reader is invited to learn Cree words and phrases from the poetry and to reflect on how language is learned (through listening and speaking rather than through reading and writing”’). Moreover, Mcllwraith creates meaning in the space between English and Cree as the continuous moving between languages asks her and the reader to reflect on differences and relations between the two—and the worldviews embedded within. READING KIYAM AS LANGUAGE GUIDE To further support the idea of Mcllwraith’s poems as language lessons for the reader, let us take a closer look at the paratextual material of kiyam. The translingual presentation of almost all poems is accompanied by the paratextual material that is aimed at helping the reader understand the language lessons presented in her work, on the one hand, and to preserving Cree language knowledge and revitalizing the language, on the other hand. The collection of poetry is completely structured as a language guide. Most notable are the guide to Cree pronunciation preceding the poems, the extra resources on Cree language in the bibliography, and the extensive, almost 30 pages long, glossary following the poems.” Building on Cree language scholarship, the pronunciation guide entitled “the sounds of plains cree: a guide to pronunciation” is aimed at the “accurate preservation of Plains Cree pronunciation” as it discusses the pronunciation of Plains Cree consonants, vowels, and stress. In this 20 Naomi Mcllwraith — Ellen Kartz: Becoming a Fluent Listener: Ellen Kartz Interviews Naomi Mcllwraith, Read Alberta, 5 April 2022, https://readalberta.ca/interviews/becoming-a-fluent-listener-ellen-kartz-interviews-naomi-mcilwraith/, accessed 10 December 2022. 2! In many (often Western) educational contexts, there is a focus on writing, which MclIlwraith alludes to in the interview: “Perhaps because I’ve been schooled in the industrial sense of schooling, I’m therefore very adept with the written word but must work much harder with the spoken word.” Cree, on the other hand, is much more attuned to the oral. McIlwraith—Kartz: Becoming a Fluent Listener. 22 Mcilwraith: kiyam, xi-xiii (“the sounds of plains cree: a guide to pronunciation”), 153-155 (language resources in bibliography), 125-152 (“cree-english correspondences”). « 58 «
