Let’s go crazy with Chinuk Wawa!
Being a scotty boffin o’ contact linguistics, I say let’s go crazy with Chinuk Wawa! We have at least 3 simplex words for “insane” in the Jargon, another instance of embarrassing riches where… Continue reading
Monthly Archive: October, 2015
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Chinook saw
I’m blogging this for the name “Chinook saw”. This was a mystery we discussed 16 years ago on the CHINOOK listserv. The phrase “Chinook saw” turns up in the Thompson River Salish dictionary,… Continue reading
Tobacco: not just an Indian weed
Tobacco‘s but an Indian weed, said a moralistic Elizabethan song: But it sure was popular. Chinook Jargon had many words for it… I want to add one to the documentation. You’ll never guess it. Will… Continue reading
Prosch’s ms. dictionary: a critical find
Washington territory pioneer Thomas Wickham Prosch (1850-1915 and yes, a son of early [1857] North Oregon settler, Steilacoom newspaper editor, and official territorial publisher, Charles Prosch) published a Chinook Jargon dictionary in 1888 that I… Continue reading
Units of measure, charismatic megafauna, & bridging from Chinook to English in 1890s Kamloops
“Units of measure, charismatic megafauna, & bridging from Chinook to English in 1890s Kamloops” How’s that for a dissertation title? 🙂 Because, in the course of a small excerpt from Kamloops Wawa #100 (15 October… Continue reading
Til mamuk: a Kamloops idiom
Til mamuk: literally “heavy work”: an expressive idiom for violent mayhem. You’re only going to discover this one if you take the trouble to dig into Kamloops Chinook Jargon, shorthand alphabet and all. First of… Continue reading
Kata meaning “messed up” outside of Grand Ronde creole
One use of qʰáta, literally ‘how’, that’s always seemed to me an idiom characteristic of the Grand Ronde (Oregon) creole variety of Chinuk Wawa is as a predicative adjective (or stative verb, it… Continue reading
I was saying about “railroad” being Chinuk Wawa…
…and here’s a real example in the Jargon of an Aboriginal fella. Joseph Thompson, probably recently surnamed thus for his Salish tribal affiliation, contributed a letter to issue #94 (03 September 1893) of Kamloops Wawa,… Continue reading
A second word for ‘sailor’
I talked yesterday about a word for “sailor”, shipman, that most likely jumped ship from the S.S. Chinook Jargon and took up residence in Hul’q’umi’num’ Salish of southwestern Vancouver Island, Canada — so today let’s pursue the… Continue reading
1907 letter in Chinook to Edmond Meany
James “Jim” A. Wood‘s letter in Chinook Jargon to Professor Edmond Meany, June 25, 1907, regarding the upcoming (1909) Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. Typically for the West, we were in a rush: the expo was planned… Continue reading