1875: Are Chinook and Japanese related?
Here’s one of the earliest examples of an idea that I first heard from folks on our CHINOOK listserv around 1999 — are Chinuk Wawa and Japanese related?
Spoiling your fun right off, no, they’re not related. Neither does CW have anything to do with Hebrew or Welsh.
But check out this line of thinking:
Mr. Brooks, who, as already remarked has
studied the question thoroughly, drew some in-
teresting conclusions from these records, show-
ing that among the coast tribes of our nortb-
west coast, a constant but limited infusion of
Japanese blood has occurred, coming entirely
from male Japanese seamen; no single record
of any female exists. These unfortunate men,
often illiterate, and separated from their sources
of learning, necessarily lost their own language,
but in doing so, doubtless contributed many
insulated words to the Indian dialects of this
coast; as for example, the Japanese word for
quick is hiaco, and [the] Chenook word for speed is
hyack. The Chenook word is always an abbre-
viated word, or shorter word than the Japanese,
from which he argued, that the latter was the
original and the former derived. The construc-
tion of the two languages is, however, differ-
ent.
— from “Japanese Wrecks”, in the Salem (OR) Willamette Farmer of April 2, 1875, page 3, column 4
Can you think of any other Japanese words that sound Chinook Jargon-ish if you shorten them???
