Yellowknife

63 degrees fahrenheit

So, I’m all moved in to my new home now, and it’s quite nice (I’ll have to devote a separate post to it, with pictures).  One issue is that, like nearly all homes in Dettah, it doesn’t have city water, but instead you get your water from a water truck.  There’s one truck that brings you clean water (taken straight out of the Yellowknife River), and another truck that sucks out the sewage and dumps it in the “sewage lagoon”.

A friend of mine has told me that he would have reservations about drinking water straight out of the river….well, the area north of Yellowknife is very sparsely populated so there’s virtually no pollution.  Maybe 80 miles or so upstream a grizzly bear took a crap or something, but that’s about it pollution-wise.

However, there’s almost no water left in the tank.  When I moved in to the house, the guy said there was enough water for “two toilet flushes and a cup of tea”.  I’m more inclined towards a shower, but the truck doesn’t arrive until tomorrow, and I’m not sure what time, either.  I’m already starting to look disheveled.  On the bright side, though, if I get water by tomorrow afternoon I’ll be all spiffy in time for my karaoke performance at Hot Shots Pub & Grub.  I’m hoping they have Kenny Rogers this time.

Finally, I attended the meeting of Goyatiko’s language board this evening.  It’s conducted very professionally, with motions, seconding motions, and so forth.  This is done in both Dogrib and English.  Anyway, to record a motion, you say nàyiìdà  “he/she moves it”.  Note your lovely object agreement disjoint anaphor [y] and semelfactive situation aspect expressed by falling tone [iì].  In fact after uttering this word, Mary Rose said, “Alex, this would be a good verb for your paradigms”.

See, some people are very nice to linguists