I’ve previously told how “the M-word“, musum ‘sleep’, had lewd overtones in Chinuk Wawa. Now the priest makes it explicit. Writing in shorthand French, Father Le Jeune observes in Kamloops Wawa #121 (October 1894, page 170):… Continue reading
<Miri Krismas> kopa msaika! <Merry Christmas> to you folks! My gift to you is the first-ever Christmas story to be written in Chinuk pipa shorthand. I hope you’ll enjoy how it ties together Chinuk Wawa… Continue reading
The doggerel hits the fan! Mysteries are sprayed liberally! From a one-page remembrance of an indigenous Warm Springs leader, “Stock Whitley” by Carson C. Masiker in Oregon Native Son and Historical Magazine, Vol. II no. 3-9… Continue reading
First I wrote about discovering a Heiltsuk word that probably showed how the Chinuk Wawa word — otherwise unknown to us — for “cannery” was fish house. Then I found backup for the… Continue reading
Snowman: Chinook. Chinook snowman!
The word that was spelled kanamokst in the Kamloops area is known in every dialect of Chinuk Wawa. Dictionaries mostly define it in English as an adverb, “together”. This is what you’ll learn from the Grand Ronde… Continue reading
Most wanted, to bring Chinook Jargon alive: definitions of the language…in the language. If we’re making the effort to revitalize an endangered idiom such as “Chinook”, we have to give new speakers a… Continue reading
The unique BC alphabet for Chinook Jargon, Chinuk pipa, found a secure place in Indigenous people’s hearts in its first few years. Not just southern interior people, and not limited either to lower mainland… Continue reading
I blogged the other day about the great Fraser River flood of 1894; how about some Indigenous people’s eyewitness notes, in Chinuk Wawa? From Kamloops Wawa #118b, July 1894, page 131: <More about the flood.>… Continue reading
Mirabile visu, a book review turns juicy! Commenting at length on Horatio Hale’s 1890 revision of his 1846 (Wilkes) U.S. Exploring Expedition report, a Robert Brown tosses in some great s#!+ in Chinook that you’ve never read… Continue reading
