Chinook Jargon at the movies: 2 people I met…
Within 24 hours recently, I met two new people with interesting Chinook Jargon connections.
Monthly Archive: September, 2025
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CA: traces of Chinuk Wawa in Shasta
Shasta speakers were one of the Indigenous groups who wound up at Grand Ronde and Siletz Reservations in Oregon, thus participating in the re-creolization there of Chinuk Wawa.*
Northern Chinook Jargon “kanawi tilikom” for ‘everybody’, and Secwépemc Salish influence
In Kamloops Wawa newspaper issue #126 of March 1895, the included issue of the charming mini-newspaper Shugirkin Tintin (‘The Sugarcane [BC] Bell’) is a glimpse into how the Jargon was spoken in that more northerly part of… Continue reading
“Doing God knows what” is real different in Chinook Jargon
Listening to a podcast in American English, I was struck by a phrase used: “doing God knows what“.
My goodness…another version of the US Civil War “code talk telegram” story
Still another version of the Civil War “code talking” Chinook Jargon anecdote/joke!
Chinook Jargon in the news: Seattle Times on Washington state ferries woodworkers
The Seattle Times’ Nick Deshais (who used to report here in Spokane) has a great article in that paper’s “Traffic Lab” series:
CA: a Yurok etymology for alíkʰuchik ‘dentalium’?
Let me echo the sentiments of Bright and Olmsted!
Traces of Chinook Jargon in Achumawi?
The farthest southeast that I’ve found accounts of people speaking Chinuk Wawa is in Modoc-Klamath country of far south-central Oregon, which abuts Achumawi territory, in the northeastern corner of California.
OR, BC: Reinhart’s “The Golden Frontier…1851-1869”
My thanks go to Gaye Schafer for sharing this book of her ancestor’s frontier-era memories of Oregon, and other Pacific NW areas.