Monthly Archive: September, 2018

Clah’s Chinook revisited

by

With the help of some friends, I’d like to hark back to a reported Chinuk Wawa conversation.

The Indian History of the Modoc War

by

Subtitled, thoughtfully, “And the Causes That Led to It”. 

I’m afraid this won’t be a very tame post…

by

…because it’s happily snarled up.

Frontier Yarns

by

I’m curious what my readers will think about the Chinook Jargon quoted here…

“Ancotty” as a loanword into regional English

by

It can’t be a coincidence that post-frontier Pacific Northwest settler society, preoccupied with building up the mythic greatness of its earliest arrivals, borrowed Chinuk Wawa’s word for “old times” into English… 

“Chako” may be a Nootka Jargon compound, & Chinookan

by

The unavoidable Chinuk Wawa word “chako” (cháku) is typically explained as having come to us originally from Nuuchahnulth (“NCN”, of Vancouver Island, Canada)…but it may have as many as three sources. 

West Coast CPE, 19th c.

by

One of the topics that keeps intersecting with my unifying theme of Chinook Jargon is the use of multiple pidgin languages here in the West. 

The Western Avernus

by

This is a book that makes more of a literary impression than a linguistic one, but there’s worthy Chinooking from the British Columbia frontier here.

15 sous and the HBC

by

Way, way back when, in fur-trade times, “the River Quinze Sous” was a name for southwest Washington state’s Newaukum River, or according to some sources, the Chehalis River to which it’s a tributary.

Packhorses to the Pacific

by

As a Depression-Era honeymoon trip, a young couple rode horses across BC, retracing Alexander Mackenzie’s trailblazing 1793 steps at a time when Chinuk Wawa was still spoken in many locales.