Monthly Archive: October, 2018

The great Panjandrum, the Hyu Tyee, the wonderful Pooh-Bah

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Disclaimer: the following was published 50 years before Donald Trump was even born.

Fraser River oolahans, a hyas closh muck-a-muck

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The most BC sentence ever 🙂 

Jump Off Joe! How’d that name happen?

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Because I deal in Linguistic Archaeology™, my readers know Pacific NW place names periodically come up here (see “15 Sous and the HBC” and such), so how about the oddity that is “Jump… Continue reading

Dogs are the missing link.

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Puzzling over a puzzle…

Pigeon English letter (can it be found?)

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A report of a letter in Chinese Pidgin English…can it be found in some archive?

Buckskin invitation

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The Improved Order of Red Men strike again.

Moi, je shrug.

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I’m indebted to this one correspondent of mine who’s constantly asking really good questions:

A séance with a Cayuse chief via Grand Ronde Chinuk Wawa!

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Apparently my powers of invention have been outstripped by other folks’ weird scientific uses for Chinuk Wawa.

About Jargon hymnody & prosody

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A study in Papers of the Hymn Society of America, volume 18 (1954), reproduces from Myron Eells’s small 1889 book “Hymns in the Chinook Jargon Language” the following claim:

“Duke of York” & traces of early British-S’Klallam contact

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I want to keep this short & sweet: modern Nuuchahnulth preserves traces of early contact-era English.