“The Survey of Vancouver English”: Part 2, “skookum”
An interesting report, “The Survey of Vancouver English“, is subtitled “A Sociolinguistic Study of Urban Canadian English”.
Monthly Archive: June, 2025
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“Frazer’s River” BC timeline, 1858 — how the Jargon suddenly got brought into New Caledonia
A rare clear starting point in language history is the introduction of Chinook Jargon into mainland British Columbia (New Caledonia then), which we can place in 1858.
1843-44, OR and CA: “Captain Fremont’s Second Exploring Expedition — Continued”
Comments about a Chinook young man (Billy Chinook) accompanying the famous Captain John C. Frémont’s second exploring expedition into California reveal how hugely important Chinook Jargon was, at least half a century into… Continue reading
Ikta Dale McCreery yaka t’ɬap (Part 16: Fast? Big?)
Looking through a number of observations made by our friend Dr Dale McCreery from where he lives up on BC’s central coast…
2008: Denzer-King on “doosh” meaning ‘cat’
I’d like to spend a moment with ‘cats’.
If you’re looking for important material to back-translate into Chinuk Wawa…
(For a class assignment, or as a public service,) you need to read James G Swan’s 1857 book “The Northwest Coast“.
1886, WA: Olney appointed interpreter
Late in the frontier era in Washington Territory, there was still a real need for experts at talking Chinuk Wawa.
I need to go find this in Rome…!
A unique couple of items in “Chinook Writing” are spoken of in Kamloops Wawa #158 (November 1897), page 166:
Chinook Jargon does have gender (just not female/male, and only in verb phrases)
My current reading of B. Jagersma’s astonishingly fine grammar of the first known written human language, Sumerian, reminds me to dash off a technical point that I ought to be emphasizing, because everyone… Continue reading