1900, OR: A litany of stock Jargon phrases substitutes for Latin
The graduation ceremony of an Oregon medical school probably didn’t really contain this faux-dignified humorous address in “the classic Chinook“…
Image credit: Wikipedia
But the post-frontier readership of the newspaper surely got the joke.
Next came the conferring of degrees
upon the five graduates: I. N. Saun-
ders, E. G. Kirby, J. H. Robinett, F. E.
Brown and F. R. Bowersox. After a
short address, President Hawley called
them up singly and addressed each as
follows: “Charko six, nika tikka wawa [‘Come here friend; I want to talk’]
copa mika. Hyon close muckamuck. [‘with you. Plenty of good food.’]
Kar mika klatawa. Sitkum dollar hyas [‘Where are you going? Half a dollar would be just’]
close,” or words to that effect, and the [‘fine.’]
four years of study were over for the
young men, who are now free to seek
their several spheres of usefulness in
their chosen profession.
— from “Medical College”, in the Salem (OR) Capital Journal of April 4, 1900, page 4, column 3
The Chinuk Wawa there is nothing more nor less than several of the most frequently heard phrases in that language.
One reason I’m sharing this with you is, it includes sitkum dollar hyas close, a typical phrase of Indigenous vendors that quickly became part of Pacific Northwest folklore as an interlingual pun with English.
The joke always turned on a new Settler (never an oldtimer!) mistaking sitkum for ‘six’ or ‘sixty’…
