1943, WA: Irate utility customer vents in Chinuk Wawa
This was during wartime, too, so I wonder if the mail censors got alarmed about the “coded message” …
Can you read this WW2 optician ad? It’s from the same newspaper page as the Chinook Jargon message.
Headlined “In Chinook or in English, Debtor Dodges City’s ‘Dun’ “, the following article is an anecdote about a cheesed-off ex-Seattleite surprising City Light employees by writing in Chinook Jargon long after the frontier era.
I’ll just transcribe the Jargon part, which I take as a jab at “kids these days”, but here’s the whole article for you to look at (available also at the link below) —
[As written:] Klonass ikt moon, klonass moxt moon, alki nika mamook klatawa
[BC Learners Alphabet:] Tl’oonas iht moon, tl’oonas mokwst moon, atlki naika mamook-tlatawa
[My translation:] Maybe in a month or two I’ll send
[James A. Wood’s translation:] Maybe in one month, maybe in two months, maybe sometime I’ll sendkonaway chikamin kopa mika(;) klahowya.*
kanawei chikamin kopa maika; Tlahowyum.
you all of the money. Goodbye.
you the money.
— from the Seattle (WA) Daily Times of July 21, 1943, page 3, columns 2 & 3
* [untranslated by James A. Wood]
That’s perfectly good Northern-Dialect Chinook Jargon, at a very late date.
