Monthly Archive: November, 2018

“Hiyou sick here”: BC Chinese Pidgin English hybridized with BC Chinook Jargon

I’ve told before about the tendency for any and all pidgin languages spoken on the West Coast of North America to get used in tandem — even blending together.

KULL vs. COLE!

Spellings matter.

Dick Fry, high tyee at Bonners Ferry

“High tyee“, like “high muckymuck“,  reflects a mixed English-Chinook Wawa pedigree, but is its own critter.  

Direct from Frazer river

Most of the best news coverage of British Columbia’s early gold rushes is to be found in…California.

Emic views of Chinuk Wawa

“Growing Up Indian: An Emic Perspective” by Coquille Tribe elder George Bundy Wasson, Jr. is a PhD dissertation that he wrote at the University of Oregon, 2001. Wasson’s unconventional “insider view” dissertation has… Continue reading

Nostalgia: Song in Chinook Jargon brings down the house

I’d love to know what this Chinuk Wawa song was…

Modoc “Scarface Charley” was really Wagon-Scarface

Hey, lots of folks in the frontier West had colorful handles…

Native metaphors for disabilities

I don’t know why this hit me, but I’ve recently realized that Chinuk Wawa’s words for physical handicaps show us yet more evidence of Indigenous metaphors…

A point made by the “untutored savage”

A double slur.

By 1863, new Grand Ronde schoolkids only spoke Chinuk Wawa

August 1, 1863: less than a decade into the reservation period, schoolkids at Grand Ronde could only be taught in Chinook Jargon.