1932: Rhodes Scholar gives speech in Jargon

From the “Small World” Dept.!

Image credit: Poster Museum

Apparently the Chinooker below had no relation to the linguist James A. Gibson who did his master’s thesis on Quinault Salish. They just shared a name and a region and a love of our languages.

Courtesy of reader Alex Code, we have this news of a fella who spoke Chinuk Wawa on Latvian radio before World War 2. At least he was speaking into a microphone to a lot of people, judging by the phrase “into the ether”. His Chinook Jargon was published in the Latvian student newspaper, too — how fun it would be to find that!

European Countries Extend Welcome To Rhodes Scholar

James A. Gibson, Rhodes scholar from this University two years ago, reports his doings during the summer, covering many points of interest in Europe.

In Latvia he attended the Congress [Congrès de la Confédération] Internationale [des] Etudiants where delegates of nineteen different countries sent off into the ether greetings to any of their fellow countrymen sojourning or living in Latvia. Gibson distinguished himself by delivering his oration in Chinook, somewhat bewildering his vast audience, who thought the native language of Canada was English. He was introduced as “Dzems Dzibson.”

The words of greeting were duly reported in the student periodical the following day in phonetical Chinook. The location of the convention was Riga, the capital of Latvia…

— from the University of British Columbia Ubyssey of October 12, 1932, page 1, column 2

Bonus fact:

The year 1932 must’ve been a time before western Canadian university students routinely knew much French, judging by the garbling of the name of the student confederation 😁