Report of the Columbia Mission. London: Rivingtons, Waterloo Place, 1860 [sic]. A record of the doings of Dr. George Hills (hardly mentioned by name in this book!), the first Anglican Bishop of Columbia, on the Northwest… Continue reading
The other day I showed an old newspaper headline about a disaster at the Skookum Mine. Was this the Skookum Slope Coal Mine in the Cascade Mountains near Wilkeson, WA (in eastern Pierce County–not… Continue reading
On our way back to Spokane from a visit to the coast, we stopped in at Roslyn, Washington, one of my mom’s and late dad’s favorite little towns. This town was founded in… Continue reading
“The Land of the Muskeg” by Henry [Charles Augustus] Somers Somerset. London: William Heinemann, 1895. Another in the rip-roaring fun fin-de-siècle genre of gentleman hunters’ nonfiction travel narratives, “Land of the Muskeg” by Hank,… Continue reading
This question came in to me: “Help! What does ‘holy mucky flip‘ mean?” Can any of you help? Sounds like maybe Utah talk to me.
Over at the Language Log, Sally Thomason writes of a new language. It’s not an intentionally constructed one like Klingon. And it’s not a pidgin / creole like Chinook Jargon. It is a… Continue reading
Found in someone’s Facebook stream… Dear Tillicum thieves!
Presented, for your consideration: outsiders’ folk-linguistic perceptions of Indian names. White folks love thinking about them. They have weird phonology… We have found that the easiest way to pronounce certain Indian names is to… Continue reading
From an 1887 article titled “Siwash potlatches”, a novel theory of why Chinese immigrants speak Chinook Jargon: It was while I was in Ta- coma, by the way, that a very gifted and… Continue reading
