Mid-Columbia pidgin sub-dialect of Central dialect of Chinook Jargon: Part 3 ‘skulit’
Another gem from a seldom documented subvariety of the Central (i.e. Columbia River) Dialect of Chinuk Wawa! From Louis-Napoléon St Onge’s handwritten dictionary, circa 1890:
There’s a disturbing number of schools named for Marcus Whitman
(image credit: NBC Right Now)
skulit “school” (the building, thus, a Noun)
St O labels this as “Yakama Jargon”.
The word survives as skúulit “school (building), school house” in the Ichishkíin Sahaptin language, which is its source.
The -it is a Sahaptin suffix, perhaps related to Sahaptin níit ‘house’ and its Nez Perce cognate ʔiní•t.
The equivalent term in all of the rest of Chinook Jargon is skul-haws.
